With her remarkable ability to create characters you wish could be part of your life forever, Frances O'Roark Dowell introduces Tobin McCauley, Chicken Boy.

Chicken Boy

ANNOTATION

Since the death of his mother, Tobin's family life and school life have been in disarray, but after he starts raising chickens with his seventh-grade classmate, Henry, everything starts to fall into place.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Since the death of his mother, Tobin's family life and school life have been in disarray, but after he starts raising chickens with his seventh-grade classmate, Henry, everything starts to fall into place.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

As sensitively wrought if not quite as engrossing as Dowell's Dovey Coe, this slice-of-life novel shows the hurt, pride and hidden potential of a boy from a dysfunctional family. When Toby McCauley enters seventh grade, everyone expects him to be as much a troublemaker as his older siblings and as "crazy" as his grandmother, who gets arrested after driving up the sidewalk to drop Toby off at junior high for his first day of school. Upholding McCauley tradition, Toby does play the role of a rebel at first, peeving Coach Kelly by refusing to change his clothes for P.E. and earning himself a suspension for getting into a fight. It isn't until he finds a friend in classmate Henry, an aspiring chicken farmer, that Toby begins to turn things around. Using economical prose, colorfully strewn with rural dialect, the author traces how Toby, previously a loner, learns to trust people outside the McCauley clan as he helps Henry and his younger brother raise chickens. If Toby doesn't share Henry's passion for hens (at least at first), he does appreciate his friend's stable home life and gentle encouragement to embrace rather than resist opportunities to excel. Once again displaying a keen ear for dialogue and a skill for painting pictures with words, the author creates a story of friendship and family conflict that is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming. Ages 10-up. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Children's Literature - Susie Wilde

Seventh grader Tobin McCauley is used to getting in trouble, being bullied, never doing his homework, and wondering if the feud between his father and his granny will ever end. He is used to the disorganization and dirt at home, and the empty cupboards. He wonders if he will ever get a meal. Things have been this way since his mother died, which left him and his older brothers and sisters grieving. When he stands up for a teacher, he gains not just a five-day-suspension but a friend who's determined to help him turn his life around. Miss Thesman cares about what Tobin writes. Tobin is willing to defend her honor, as his new friend Henry Otis notices. Henry Otis notices a lot of things besides Tobin's good heart and potential. He notices chickens for one thing and convinces Tobin to notice with him. Tobin starts by noticing chickens and ends by noticing the sadness in his family. Could a green-egg-laying chicken and a kid who wears an "I'm Tiger Woods" t-shirt really change his life? Frances Dowell's gift for voice and inventiveness mark this new story. Without sentimentality, she tells the heart-wrenching story of a boy and his family who are destroyed by grief, and creates another character that readers will never forget. 2005, Atheneum, Ages 10 to 12.

VOYA - Patrick Jones

As in the author's Dovey Coe (Atheneum/S & S, 2000), this book features a strong first-person voice of a young southerner coming-of-age. Seventh grader Tobin McCauley is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between his father and grandmother, who with Tobin still seek closure in the death of Tobin's mother years before. Things at school are not much better until he meets up with Henry Otis. Through Henry and his love of chickens, Tobin finds some center to his life. The plot is secondary to these finely drawn adult and middle school characters. The easy prose states simple truths as Tobin observes the world around him-"Going from Henry's house to mine was like walking out of a color movie into one that was nothing but black and white"-and inside him-"You start raising chickens, . . . You start feeling like this useful human being. It was getting so I hardly recognized myself in the mirror." There is plenty of humor, mostly from Tobin's oddball grandmother, as well as some great gross-out, including a nice discussion of the different kinds of chicken sh_t. The appeal here is more rural than urban and more for younger teens who prefer light stories over dark. With plenty of good booktalking material as well as read-aloud sections, this novel will appeal to younger teens who have read Richard Peck. VOYA CODES: 4Q 3P M (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8). 2005, Atheneum/S & S, 208p., Ages 11 to 14.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-7-In Raleigh, NC, seventh-grader Tobin McCauley has let life pass him by since his mother died five years earlier, but when a new student at school befriends him, he begins to look at the world with fresh eyes. Tobin has been the odd kid out for so long that when Henry Otis engages him in conversation and invites him over, the boy wonders what to make of it all. While Tobin's father is working or out on weekends, he and his older siblings scrounge for cereal to eat while watching television and long for the mother they vaguely remember. "When you learn about chickens, you will learn about life" is good advice from Henry and the basis for this story. Tobin learns just where he fits in as a school project to raise chickens develops into more than just a way to get extra credit. He describes his emotions, saying, "I'd been feeling kind of funny in general, like a snake shedding its skin and finding out it was a whole different animal underneath." Tobin's life will resonate with many young people who are struggling to see just where they fit in. His grandmother and her sky blue Toyota truck add humorous relief to such weighty subjects as child custody and the death of a parent. This is a refreshingly well-written encounter with richly developed and well-defined characters whom readers won't soon forget.-Cheryl Ashton, Amherst Public Library, OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Seventh-grader Tobin has pretty much flown under the radar most of his life, only stealing a paper clip now and then to prove his relationship to the rest of his juvenile-delinquent family. Why now, then, does Henry the new kid, seem to want to adopt him as a bosom buddy? Despite himself, Tobin finds himself falling into a friendship with Henry and his little brother Harrison, and pretty soon, he's raising chickens as part of a joint scientific-entrepreneurial project the two brothers have cooked up. Aside from having a passel of criminal siblings, Tobin's mother has died, his father parents by neglect and his feisty Granny's interference has landed him in foster care. Tobin narrates his story, his voice appealingly self-deprecatory and earthy. Remarkably enough, the Social Services intervention turns out to be just the right thing to pull the family back together, but the process unfolds so unpresumptuously that readers will be rooting for them all the way. Tobin's own blossoming, through friendship, and the rediscovery of his family, and the love for and of his chickens, is entirely satisfying-just right. (Fiction. 10-14)