Chicken Scratches

Chicken Scratches: Poultry Poetry and Rooster Rhymes
By George Shannon & Lynn Brunelle
Chronicle Books, 2010. Unpaged. Juvenile nonfiction/poetry.

Who knew poetry could be this fun? Shannon and Brunelle have created a wacky and sometimes irreverent collection of poems about chickens. The poems are in a variety of forms, but most rhyme and most are very short and snappy, like "A chicken ate a pack of seeds/before she read the label./ Next day she laid a cantaloupe/upon the breakfast table." They are creatively typeset with a variety of colored fonts. Menchin's colored cartoon drawings are a perfect match for the text. The little chicken characters are full of life and mischief and Menchin always captures the essence of the punch line. This is a great book for anyone who might be a reluctant poetry reader, or who just wants to smile.

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