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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, August 22, 2007
This review is from: The Chicken Dance (Hardcover)
How do you go from being an unknown in Horse Island to becoming famous? It's simple -- win a chicken judging contest. The minimum age for entering the contest has been lowered to eleven this year. Don Schmidt sees this as his opportunity to become more well-known and to make a difference in his normal ho-hum life. He rents all kinds of different books from the library and becomes a chicken "expert."
The chicken judging contest is only the beginning of the many changes in Don's life. He lives with his Mother and Father; they don't want him to ever call them Mom and Dad. They are an unusual family who always eat TV dinners. Mother even surprises Father and Don when having a dinner party, but it is quite a hassle getting all the potatoes out of those foil trays. Don is caught looking at some papers in his parents' room, and finds out that his real name is Stanley. Mother and Father are always talking about his sister Dawn, who disappeared around the time that Don was born. Don is always living in her shadow. No mention of whether she is dead or was kidnapped intrigues Don, so he decides to go search for her.
Don does such a great job at judging chickens that he is chosen to attend the regional chicken judging event in Baton Rouge. He learns from a dancer that Dawn has been seen dancing at a club in the same town. He enlists the help of one of his friends and the boys set out on the streets and find her. Its one discovery after another while on the trail of Dawn.
This is a very exciting book with its many twists and turns. There is a certain amount of mystery involved as well as an intriguing storyline with often times very humorous portions. This is a must-read for those tweens who enjoy a story where an ordinary boy makes himself known and sets his boring life on a more exciting track. This book would definitely be enjoyed by girls as well as boys, though. There will be portions where you will be cackling with laughter. You will never do "the chicken dance" the same way again.
Reviewed by: Lori P.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I thought this was about chicken judging..., October 12, 2007
A Kid's Review
This review is from: The Chicken Dance (Hardcover)
But I guess I was wrong... This book starts out with 11yr old Don (or Stanely) and how he becomes famous in his town because of winning a chicken judging contest. I really liked how it started since I like a little drama (Don's parents' faught a lot) and comedy mixed into books. But I just finished it today and was very unhappy with the ending results. It went from Don loving chickens, to him trying to find his long lost sister Dawn (who we find out isn't dead like Don's parents said). He finds out that she was kidnapped... but then it turns out she ran away because (in her words) "I didn't want to dance anymore." yet, she is a dancer at a club in Lousianna; and later she comes to find Don to tell him she wants him to leave the "horrible woman" (Don's mother) and his father and to run away with her; then she tells Don that he is HER son, and that she was young and stupid and had him at age 15, and she didn't want her parents mad so she ran away, leaving Don with the nurse (Who for some reason gave Don to Dawn's mother and father, aka now known as Don's grandparents). To me that doesn't sound like anything about chickens. Then Dawn forces Don to choose, to go with his Mom, Dad, or Her. The parents are getting a divorce and that means that Don has to choose one: his mother (well Grandmother,), his father (well, grandfather), or his sister (well, mother). He leaves his choice up to his chicken KC by making her poop on one of the names he has written down. She poos on the grandmother's name and so he asks Dawn if she wants to stay with him and his Grandmother. She says no and tells Don to not tell anyone that she had come, so he doesn't. The book ends with him going inside the house to his passed out mom. They never explain if he moves, or looses his chickens, or if he's happy with his mom, or even if his dad gets to see him. Don't get me wrong, I left out many good parts of the story, but I just didn't like how this story turned into some kind of "run away from home" thing. It just didn't make sence.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
inappropriate content for children, November 20, 2010
I read this book on tape with my children and fast forwarded several sections. (I had to listen to parts of it alone when I thought something was coming up and skip chapters that were not appropriate.) Some dirtball wrote on the back cover that this book was appropriate for children 5 and up. In this book your 5 year old will be told that there is no Easter bunny. Your 5 year old will also be introduced to the following adult topics: prostitution, fornication, adultery, child neglect and emotional abuse. Don's "mother" got knocked up -- that's why his parents got married; Don's "sister" ran away from home (his "mother" lied to him and told him she was dead) and when Don catches up with her she is a stripper; Don's mother is having an affair with Bobby Beuford; his father catches them in bed together, tries to kill her lover, then asks her for a divorce. Don grows up a lonely child with no friends so he talks to the chickens. His parents hardly speak to him, never say they love him, forget his birthday, and his mother never even touches him -- no hugs or anything -- until he's almost 12 years old. How is any of this appropriate for young children? My children are significantly older than 5 and it is still not appropriate for them. I would not only not recommend this book for children, I would not recommend any book by this author or by this publisher for children. If you're an adult and don't mind the bad grammar, it's an okay but extremely depressing story.
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