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Review: One Chicken Nugget

 

By Tadgh Bentley
New York: Balzer + Bray, 2023. Picture Book.

Everybody knows that monsters love chicken nuggets, but Frank REALLY, REALLY loves chicken nuggets. Actually, though, he only loves Celeste's chicken nuggets. They are perfect in every way. The only problem is that Celeste has had it with Frank. He has terrible table manners, eats all her supplies, scares away the other customers, and doesn't even pay for his food. She's tried everything she can think of to get rid of him, putting a bubble around her food truck, running away, hiding, even going up in a hot air balloon. Unfortunately, Frank finds her no matter where she goes. So one night she closes up shop and drives to the library. She consults many books and then devises a month-long contest where the winner will get free chicken nuggets for life. It seems easy enough, all Frank has to do is eat one chicken nugget, doubled each day for a month. But can even a monster this obsessed with chicken eat 536,870,912 nuggets on day 30? You'll have to read it to find out. You may have read other stories similar to this one, including One Grain of Rice by Demi. These tales are based on the Indian folktale of Sissa, and there's more information in the back of the book about the evolution of this story throughout time. This book would be a great read aloud for young children for the Traditional category in The Great Genre Challenge.

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