From the Publisher

Tobin Mccauley's got a near-certifiable grandmother, a pack of juvenile-delinquent siblings, and a dad who's not going to win father of the year any time soon. To top it off, Tobin's only friend truly believes that the study of chickens will reveal...the meaning of life? Getting through seventh grade isn't easy for anyone, son, but when the first day of school starts out with your granny's arrest, you know you've got real problems. Throw on five-day suspension (for defending your English teacher's honor), a chicken that lays green eggs, and a family feud that's tearing everyone to pieces, and you're in for one heck of a ride.

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.

Publishers Weekly

"As sensitively wrought if not quite as engrossing as Dowell's Dovey Coe," PW wrote, "this slice-of-life novel shows the hurt, pride and hidden potential of a boy from a dysfunctional family." Ages 10-up. (Jan.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Booklist

"What will grab readers are Tobin's wry, sad, immediate voice...and Dowell's depiction of adults."

School Library Journal

"This is a refreshingly well-written encounter with richly developed and well-defined characters whom readers won't soon forget."

--starred review

Susie Wilde - Children's Literature

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.

Patrick Jones - VOYA

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)

Product Details

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Chicken Boy

Atheneum

Chapter One

You might have heard about the time my granny got arrested on the first day of school. Maybe you were one of them pie-eyed kids she almost ran down with her 1984 sky blue Toyota truck, me riding shotgun. When Granny pulled up on the sidewalk like it was our own personal parking spot, everybody was yelling for them kids to get out of the way, but nobody could hear a thing over the blast of Granny's radio and her singing at the top of her lungs.

I sat in the police car while an officer made Granny walk a straight line with her finger on her nose, like maybe she'd been driving drunk, which she hadn't been. I wanted like anything to switch on the flashing lights, but the cop in the driver's seat seemed to guess what I had on my mind. "What's your name, son?" he asked, letting me know he was paying attention.

I looked at my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. "Tobin McCauley."

The cop grinned and jerked his thumb toward Granny. "Is she a McCauley, too? Because that would explain everything right off the bat."

"She's the mother-in-law to a McCauley," I told him, my fingers still itching to hit that flashing-lights button.

"Close enough," is what the cop replied. I guess he meant anyone in spitting distance of being related to one of my brothers -- or my sister, for that matter -- had a good chance of having a criminal heart. Not that they ever got busted for anything too bad, mostly petty stuff like shoplifting and being a public nuisance. And Shane and Summer were so old now that they hardly ever did anything worse than jaywalk. It'd been years since Summer had lifted a lipstick from Eckerd drugstore, or Shane had gone hot-rodding the wrong way down Six Forks Road.

The cop eyed me suspiciously, remembering that I was a McCauley, too. "You get in much trouble?"

I tried to look tough. I'd stolen a few paper clips in my time, a pencil or two, been made to stay after school for cheating on a test. Most the stuff I did, I did it because teachers seemed to expect it from me. If I didn't commit at least a few minor crimes, then they'd go on about how good I was, what a nice change from the other McCauleys they'd taught in years past. I hated school bad enough without the teachers making a fuss over me.

"Yeah, I get in trouble," I told the cop, puffing out my chest. "They had to put a special guard on me last year."

The cop gave me the quick once-over. "Bet there's not a prison built that could hold you, son," he said, then started choking on his own laughter, his face glowing red as a bowl of tomato soup.

Outside, Granny was making her case to the other officer. "I'm all this boy's got, 'cause his daddy's good for nothing," I heard her say. "His mama passed on when he was seven. Somebody's got to take care of him."

"Yes, ma'am," the police officer agreed politely. "But that doesn't mean you don't have to follow proper parking procedures."

Granny shoved a piece of Juicy Fruit in her mouth. "You like that Alan Jackson? KISS Country Radio don't play nothing but that Alan Jackson, it seems like. I think he's right good looking, but you can't see him on the radio, now can you?"

"That's right, ma'am," the officer said. He turned toward the squad car and rolled his eyes.

After I got booted out of the car, I watched from the flagpole as they drove Granny away. I was sorry they left off the siren and the lights. I knew that inside that car Granny was sorry, too.

Just the day before, my brother Patrick had tried to talk me out of riding to school with Granny. He'd found me on the carport, throwing clumps of dirt at the chain-link fence that separated our yard from the gas station next door. The owner's cat was staring at me from out beside the free air pump, but I ignored it. I don't like cats as a rule.

"Tomorrow's your first day of seventh grade," Patrick said, pulling up an overturned paint bucket and taking a seat. I nodded. It was a dumb thing for him to say. I could have said something dumb back, like, "Yeah, and tomorrow's your first day of ninth grade, big whoop," but I wasn't in the mood.

Patrick scooped up a handful of crumbled concrete and aimed it at the cat, which was now sniffing at the fence like it was thinking about coming over for a visit. "If I was you, I'd take the bus to school," he said. "Granny's been driving you since you were in second grade. You've got to figure that's long enough."

"Don't want to take the bus," I told him. "I tried it once, but the exhaust fumes turned me green."

Patrick shook his head. "Beats everybody seeing Granny drop you off at the front of the school. Seventh grade's different from sixth grade. People start to notice it when your crazy grandmother drives you around all over town. You want them to think you're weird, too?"

I picked at a piece of rubber coming off of my tennis shoe. People already thought I was weird. Between Granny and my juvenile delinquent brothers and sister and the fact that I lived in an old brick shoe box on a two-lane highway instead of in some shiny new suburban home, I didn't have much hope of them thinking otherwise. "I don't care what them fart blowers think," I told Patrick. "Why's it matter so much to you?"

Patrick stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. Just then the gas station cat wormed its way through a hole in the fence and made a beeline for the carport. Patrick kicked at it and missed. "I don't care if people like you or not."

"So why are you here talking to me?"

He didn't say anything for a minute, just looked left, then right, like he was in a spy movie and the enemy was nearby. Finally he cleared his throat and said, "Daddy said he'd buy me a Big Mac and Super Size fries if I told you not to take rides from Granny anymore."

I snorted. "Daddy don't care who gives me a ride to school. He's just looking to make Granny mad."

Patrick grinned. "Man, them two will give each other hell till one of them keels over dead."

My dad and Granny had been feuding for as long as I could remember. The only thing they ever had in common was my mom, and once she was gone, they didn't even have that. My sister, Summer, said they were both so mad about my mom dying they'd spend the rest of their lives taking it out on each other.

The gas station cat snaked its way around my ankles like it thought now maybe we could be friends. I scratched its ears without really meaning to. I didn't want to be friends with that cat or anybody else I could think of. Didn't want to go to school the next day either, especially since it was still August and way too hot for thinking.

Mostly I just wanted to ride around in Granny's truck and think about going camping out in the woods. I'd been camping two times in my life, and those trips were stuck on rerun in my brain. Whenever my mind needed somewhere to go, I pushed the camping-trip button on the inside of my head, and all the sudden I was putting river rocks in a circle to make a campfire. Made my whole body get peaceful remembering it.

After I'd watched the police car head out to the main road, I made my way down the hall to my first-period English class, going as slow as I could. I knew it would be a letdown after Granny's arrest, and I was right about that, son. Soon as I pushed open the door, a whole room of snot-nosed kids starting giggling and twittering like flea-bitten parrots. Somebody called out, "Nice parking job!"

I ignored their sorry butts. The teacher motioned me over to a desk front and center and then checked her clipboard.

"Are you Tobin?" she asked. "Tobin McCauley?"

She pronounced it wrong, though, more like McCully. "That ain't how you say it," I told her, taking my seat. "It's McCauley that rhymes with holly."

"Ain't!" a low voice croaked like a bullfrog from the back of the room, and then there was a chorus of bullfrogs calling "ain't, ain't, ain't," with a smart-aleck cricket chirping "redneck, redneck" behind it. A whole different voice, a boy's, only it was pitched high and singsongy, called out, "Ain't ain't a word!"

The teacher ignored the frogs and the cricket, but the last comment got her attention. "What makes you think it's not a word?" she asked. She walked to her desk, picked up a dictionary, and headed to the back row, where she handed it to a jughead named Cody Peters. "Look it up and tell me if it's in there."

Cody took the book from her. He didn't look too happy about having his little joke turned into an assignment. "I'll do what I can, ma'am," he said, this time in a slow, countrified voice. "Ain't starts with a, right?"

That got a good laugh from the spit wads around the room. "Stop talking and start looking," the teacher told him. She leaned against the desk in front of him, her arms folded across her chest. Cody ruffled through a few pages, then ran his finger down a row of words. After a few seconds he looked up at the teacher, his face all full of mock wonder. "Gosh, gee, ma'am, it sure enough is right here."

The teacher took the book from him and snapped it shut. "So maybe ain't is a word after all," she said, sounding victorious. She turned as she passed by me and gave me a big wink, like the victory was mine, too.

I put my head on my desk. That's all I needed, a teacher who wanted to be my hero. I closed my eyes and pictured a river. I was walking across it in knee-high rubber boots, carrying a mess of fish in a net. I could see a tent on the other side, smoke rising from the campfire.

I fell asleep before I made it over. Next thing I knew, there was a crow cawing in my ear, only it turned out to be the bell ringing for second period. I stood up slow, yawning my way back into the seventh grade and out to the hallway, where the rest of my useless day was waiting for me.

Copyright © 2005; by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Continues...

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Excerpted from Chicken Boy by Frances O'Roark Dowell Copyright © 2005 by Frances O'Roark Dowell. Excerpted by permission.
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