Customer Reviews

The Chicken Dance

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The Chicken Dance is a great first novel and is full of wonderful details and mystery. Very well written and geared to a 15 year old boy. I think it will make an excellent movie and can't wait for the sequel novel.

I totally enjoyed this book. Once I got started, I couldn't put it down. If was as if I knew the people and places the author was writing about. I never expected the story to end like it did. I've already recommended "The Chicken Dance" to friends. I can't wait for his next book!

This book is both fun, fascinating, and well-written. Don is a well-developed character with a strong voice that boys, especially twelve-year-old boys, will love. The setting is fabulous and full of interesting details about chickens which could only come from a writer who has lived on a chicken farm. Highly recommend this book for boy readers! And the plot keeps the reader turning the pages until the very end.

My sister recommended this book as I keep chickens. For the most part it was engaging for a YA novel however the ending just left me flat. I'd be curious to know how an actual young adult perceived it as I, as an adult, just found it a bit ridiculous.

The Chicken Dance
Jacques Couvillon
By Mary, 5th grade Park School

This realistic novel takes place on an island in Louisiana. Don and his parents inherited a chicken farm from Don's Uncle. The will stated that they must have at least twenty-five chickens at all times. Don admires the chickens, and decides to enter a chicken-judging contest, which he wins and becomes a local celebrity. Don's parents have always acted a little strange. They have never used their dining room, and eat a steady diet of TV dinners. Don's mother's pride and joy is her daughter Dawn, who died of scarlet fever when Don was only a baby. When Don finds a mysterious box with a bill for a certain "Detective Munson" and a birth certificate with Don's same birthday, he decides that he has a twin brother who was kidnapped, and Mr. Munson was the hired detective to find him. When Don's family begins getting strange phone calls, things start smelling fishy. And, when his parents plan a sudden vacation to New Orleans, Don finds out that his life was a little more comlicated that he thought.

The Chicken Dance has strong characters and plot twists. Jacques Couvillon tucks a huge amount of detail into just one sentence. This book is a good read, and very hard to put down after you start. Readers of all ages and kinds will read, enjoy and laugh at this hilarious book.

I give this book five stars. It is one of the best books that I've read, and keeps you reading. It is a mystery, as well as a comic novel. This is a great book, and everyone should read it at least once!

Other reviews mention the plot design of this book, but fail to mention the mature themes. This book presents a dysfunctional, deceitful family and describes adultery, stripping, fighting, an unwed mother, and one scene where Janice Schmidt shouts "I hate you" to her husband. This is written in the language appropriate for 9-12 year olds, but the situations presented are for a much more mature audience. Unfortunately, I read this book AFTER my 10 year old daughter. If I would have read it before, I would not allow her to read it.

Don Schmidt lives on a chicken farm in Horse Island, Louisiana. He is unpopular at school (he has absolutely no friends and everyone refers to him as "new kid," even though he has lived on Horse Island since kindergarten) and at home (where his mother constantly refers to his dead sister Dawn, and thinks the world revolves around herself). Out of loneliness he befriends the chickens living in his backyard and they become his best friends. Don's luck soon changes when he becomes the youngest person ever to win the chicken-judging contest at the local dairy fair. Everyone wants to be his friend and his mother seems to care about him a little more, but not enough to stop ordering him around. Don is content with his life until he finds a metal box with a birth certificate in it. The birth certificate belongs to a boy named Stanley. Don wonders who Stanley could be and when he asks his father who he is his Father simply tells him that it is his birth certificate and that they changed his name to Don, because the uncle who he was named after was a bad man. Don doesn't believe his father and begins to believe that Stanley is actually his twin that got kidnapped when they were younger. Stanley isn't real, but Don believes he is and talks to him like he was a normal person. Don soon learns that the hidden birth certificate isn't the only secret his parents have been keeping from him. Once he learns one secret he is hungry for more, and then they all unravel into a shocking, unforeseeable truth.

For the most part I enjoyed the book. It was full of unexpected twists and turns and made me laugh. There were parts of the book though that made me very mad. Especially when Don's mother forgot Don's birthday - twice, and when she wouldn't even congratulate him on his winning the chicken-judging contest. I would get very frustrated with the book and put it down and walk away at these points, because I feel that no mother should ever forget a child's birthday and should never treat their child the way his mother treated him. Besides this, the book was suspenseful and ends with a bang you would never see coming. Jacques Couvillon created a good first novel and I look forward to reading what he has coming next!