WHO YOU CALLIN’ CHICKEN?

This quick tour through the wacky world of exotic chicken breeds combines show-stopping color photos with breezy, lightly factual commentary. Announcing a “Pullet Surprise!,” Feldman focuses on the wildly diverse eggs, feathers, combs, feet, and other physical features that have been bred into show chickens, shifting to smaller type when expanding on a topic so as not to slow down less-practiced readers. The photos, several to a page, are mostly headshots—perhaps not, as is quickly evident, a chicken’s most attractive feature, but guaranteed to send young viewers rearing back in astonishment and delighted disgust. Sans any leads to further information, this seems largely intended as momentary entertainment, and each breed is confusingly identified with two, or even three, names. Still, audiences will crow over it. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-7)