Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Trouble with Chickens

Top positive review

A nifty little mystery great for reading out loud

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2011

Children's noir might sound crazy but this book from Doreen Cronin and Kevin Cornell is a nifty little mystery great for reading out loud.

To set the mood, I listened to Robert Mitchum's Philip Marlowe from Farewell My Lovely and adapted his gravelly delivery for the voice of J.J. Tully, the retired search and rescue dog. J.J. not only is the story's protagonist but also the laconic narrator through all but two of the 23 chapters.

So, who narrates the other two chapters? Well, that would be Vince the Funnel, the villainous inside dog, described as "a cross between a dachshund and a lamp." For Vince, I initially considered a Peter Lorre impersonation but settled on Orson Welles' Harry Lime from The Third Man.

With the narrative voices locked down, I added one more trick to keep my sons (ages 8 and 6) engaged in the story. We began each chapter with our own film noir soundtrack: da-dum-dum-ta-da-da-dum-dum with a cool finger snap for a beat with a single hi-hat.

We read the book over three nights as the boys' bedtime reading. My sons focused mostly on Cornell's illustrations during the first night. My eldest son rolled his eyes as I led the film noir soundtrack into each new chapter. The noir style drew them in slowly. However, the night ended with a highlight, a silhouette of Vince the Funnel at the end of chapter eight.

I had to hide the book for the second night, so my sons wouldn't read ahead before I got home from work. The eye rolling stopped. I had two enthusiastic finger snappers at the start of each chapter. They were critics, too. I mixed up a couple names only to be corrected by my six-year old, who flipped back to the book cover and named each chick.

My boys woke up and searched the house for the book. They returned from school and searched again. By the time I returned home from work, they met me at the door. Fingers snapping, the third and last night was electric. The boys, sensing a double cross and a cliffhanger for J.J., pushed me through the last six chapters.

I won't spoil the ending but, true to form, this whodunit ends with a (family-friendly) twist.

Rating: Five stars.

BTW: Parents looking for a noir treat of their own would enjoy The Best American Noir of the Century, a 39-story anthology I gave a five-star rating on Amazon in December 2010.

Top critical review

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Heidi Grange

The Trouble with Chickens

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 21, 2011

The strength of this book is the characters. Tully, the former search-and-rescue dog turned detective, narrates the story. His names for the chickens are oddly appropriate (Moosh, the mom, Dirt, and Sugar for the chicks). The point-of-view of the story makes it good for a read-a-loud. And while the villain is not hard to identify, there is lots of fun to be had using different voices to match the illustrations and tone of the story.

Plot wise there were enough twists and turns to keep me reading, but as other reviewers have mentioned the book is a spoof off of old detective shows and as such has more humor than tension. While the book is certainly not for everyone, I think that I will try it with my second or third graders and see if they like it.

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From the United States

Patricia Gress

Not age appropriate

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 6, 2019

Verified Purchase

Very miss leading. Bought the book for a 2 year old. The book is for a child that can read.

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utopiachick

My kid found this confusing and boring

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 19, 2014

My 8 year old loves mystery books (like Nancy Drew) and books with animals. Especially books that are in the view point of the animals. I thought that this book would be a huge hit. My daughter found this book to be utterly confusing and boring and gave up on it within the 2nd chapter.

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Nana V

I didn't receive this product.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 30, 2011

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

I would love to review this book and was really looking forward to doing so; however, I have never received it. It sounds like it would be ideal as a bedtime story for my grandson. So if amyone at Amazon ever reads this review, I'd certainly like a chance to read and review this item.

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Oh so boring...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 26, 2011

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

Read this together with my 9 year old son. We did not finish it because he was bored to tears and begged me to move on to something else. We read more than half of it through sheer persistence(much to my son's dismay) The characters are shallowly drawn and uninteresting. The dialogue tries too hard to follow in the footsteps of "old time" detective novels and is instead trite and uninspired. I've read and enjoyed many of Doreen Cronin's picture books with my children but was very disappointed in this longer effort of hers.

3 people found this helpful

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5 star		79%
4 star		13%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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