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Reviewed by:
  • The Chicken Problem
  • Jeannette Hulick
Oxley, Jennifer . The Chicken Problem; written and illus. by Jennifer Oxley and Billy Aronson. Random House, 2012. 32p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-96989-8 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-86989-1 $16.99 R 5-7 yrs.

Peg (a girl) and her pal Cat (a cat) are getting ready "to have a perfect picnic with a pig" when they realize that they've cut one too many pieces of pie. Cat retrieves a little chicken (for the little piece of pie) from the nearby chicken coop, but she leaves the door to the coop wide open: "There were one hundred chickens going crazy all over the place! Chickens leaping! Chickens skipping! . . . Chickens doing the chicken dance! Chickens bending over and wiggling their bottoms in the air!" Peg and Cat eventually manage to return the errant poultry to the coop, and Peg, Cat, the pig, and the little chicken all settle in to finally enjoy their pie. The buoyant text and sprightly, detailed illustrations (in a vigorous childlike, sketchy style, often against a graph-paper background) work well together, both reflecting a humorous approach to the topic of problem-solving. There are some indirect but noticeable uses of arithmetic within the text, such as the page numbers, which are written as addition problems ("1 + 1 = 2," "2 + 1 = 3," and so on), and there is also a lightly sketched "100 - 10 = 90" written on the page in which Peg and Cat have placed ten of the one hundred chickens back into the coop. Readers-aloud could certainly expand upon this usage and tie this title into a math lesson or a lesson on problem-solving in general. The book is equally enjoyable just as a funny readaloud, though, and kids will especially love poring over the illustrations in which the numerous gold, jelly-bean-shaped chickens are engaged in various amusing activities.

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