- Book Summary: The Trouble with Chickens is a funny mystery about a retired rescue do named J.J. Tully. He is approached by Moosh, the mother chicken who needs his help to find her missing chickens. J.J. agrees to help in exchange for a cheeseburger. J.J. sniffs for clues, and after finding a note, he is led into the owner's house where the vilian, Vince the Funnel (who is also a dog) resides. Vince intellectually captures J.J. with the chicks' help. J.J. soon finds out that it was the chick, Sugar, who caused him to be captured. Sugar wrote the note and made a deal with Vince in exchange for reading books. It seemed that Vince had won until, Dirt, the chick J.J. trained to rescue, comes up with a plan. Very cleverly, the chickens rescue J.J. and trap Vince just as planned. In the beginning, J.J. could barely tolerate the chickens, but by the end he gained a sense of belonging with them.
- APA Reference of Book:
- Impressions: This book grabbed my attention from the beginning with its clever humor and dialogue. I loved J.J. Tully's description of Moosh, the chicken when they first met. "Her eyes were tiny and black, and set so close to each other they practically touched. I'd be surprised if the right eyes could report back seeing anything other than the left eye" (Cronin, 2011, p. 2). The book goes on with clever and humorous lines. My attention was really alerted when chapter 10 switched to Vince the Funnel becoming the storyteller and giving his side of the story. I loved how the story builds up to telling how the chickens were in on luring J.J. into the house so that Vince could trap him.
- Professional Review: With its sharp wit and suspenseful mystery, Cronin's foray into the crowded chapter-book field is a crowd pleaser. Retired search-and-rescue dog J.J. Tully is enjoying the simple life on a farm when his world is turned upside down by an annoying hen, Moosh, and her two equally obnoxious chicks, Dirt and Sugar, who hound him to help locate Poppy and Sweetie. They fear that the missing chicks have been kidnapped and are being held hostage inside the house where ferocious Vince the Funnel -- an aptly-named canine-lives. When Moosh appears with a note stating it "behooves" the chickens to "rendezvous" to get back her peeps, J.J. muses about the likelihood of birdbrains with sophisticated vocabulary, and he must sniff out the true offenders. Cronin's tongue-in-cheek humor spills forward as the detective story unfolds, while the whodunit will keep readers guessing until the ending. Cornell's black-and-white cartoon illustrations add to the hilarity with bespectacled Sugar, cone-headed Vince the Funnel, and J.J. Tully's mismatched floppy ears. Teachers will embrace the story as a great read-aloud, while reluctant and nonreluctant readers will savor this quick read of a mystery and eagerly await the next case for J.J. Tully to crack.
Reference: Shaw, M. (2011). The trouble with chickens. School Library Journal, 57(2), p. 78-78.
- Library Uses: I would use this book to read to students and have them try to solve the mystery before getting to the end of the story. This would be a great book to teach foreshadowing and drawing conclusions.
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