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    Chicken Boy
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    Chicken Boy
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    Chicken Boy
    Audiobook3 hours

    Chicken Boy

    Written by Frances O'Roark Dowell

    Narrated by Stephen Hoye

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

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    About this audiobook

    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 a 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 12, 2005
    ISBN9780307245632
    Author

    Frances O'Roark Dowell

    Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar Award and the William Allen White Award; Where I’d Like to Be; The Secret Language of Girls and its sequels The Kind of Friends We Used to Be and The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away; Chicken Boy; Shooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Award; the Phineas L. MacGuire series; Falling In; The Second Life of Abigail Walker, which received three starred reviews; Anybody Shining; Ten Miles Past Normal; Trouble the Water; the Sam the Man series; The Class; How to Build a Story; and most recently, Hazard. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.

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    Reviews for Chicken Boy

    3.5/5

    77 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This 2007 Dorothy Canfield Fisher award nominated book is an engaging story of a 7th grade boy and his family and school life through hard times. This would be a great read for students to either gain an understanding of how a fellow student might end up in foster care and why as well as the difference in economic spectrums from which different kids come. As a chicken-loving adult, I enjoyed the love of chickens portrayed in this quick read.
    • 4/5
      Tobin (7th grade) lives with his widower father and three older siblings. Nobody keeps up the house or the yard, and the kitchen is usually empty. After his mother died, everyone just let things go to pot. His maternal grandmother, eccentric in her own right, is his best and only friend. But then Henry comes along. Henry is a fellow student who drafts Tobin to assist him and his brother in a chicken farming enterprise. Henry's little brother, Harrison, is mainly interested in profit, but Henry is more interested in proving that chickens have souls.To his surprise, Tobin finds that he likes having his peculiar friend, and he begins to like the chickens too. He starts taking more interest in school, and life in general.But then his grandmother reports his father to social services, saying he lives with an unfit parent. Tobin, his father, and his grandmother all have things to learn about being a family. But Henry and the chickens remain steady.
    • 4/5
      I wanted the retro red & gold silhouette cover, but got this, with the photo of the boy with the puppy-dog eyes, instead. Good story, but a little workmanlike, with some implausible bits, and not as quite as special & fresh as the other cover. I definitely want to know Henry and Harrison better, though. Btw, Henry is a vegetarian (well, almost, he does eat fish. And eggs, of course).
    • 4/5
      Horn Book...Tobin knows what his seventh-grade classmates think of him: he's a McCauley, so he must be white trash and a future criminal; his Granny is the town character, so he might be crazy; and he struggles with school, so perhaps he's stupid. What they don't know, and what Dowell reveals gradually, is that he's lonely. Since his mother's death, his father has abandoned all pretense of caring for him, his brothers and sister ignore him, and he has no friends. That is, until Henry, the new boy in town, sees Tobin nobly defend their English teacher and approaches him with an offer to be a partner in his chicken-raising business. Henry tells Tobin, 'When you learn about chickens, you will learn about life,' and readers have the first clue that young McCauley is about to have a whole lot of learning going on. The beauty is that Tobin's growth emerges naturally through a gentle plot and amid a flock of well-defined characters. And what he learns, along with gaining confidence and self-respect, is, 'You could love some things you'd never guess' -- like a misguided father, a bitter grandmother, and an equally lonely brother.
    • 4/5
      Good southern coming-of-age book for middle school boys. The characters occasionally seemed a little mature for their ages, but likeable none-the-less. I don't know why the mother always has to die in boy's coming of age stories, but it does seem to be an over-riding theme including this book. A custody battle, although not bad, between the main character's father and grandmother is a central theme as well as raising chickens and whether or not chickens have souls and friendship. Oddly it all ties together and works. I ejoyed this one and will recommend it.
    • 3/5
      The pace of the book was rather slow. The ending left a lot of unanswered questions. I question why the book was chosen to be on the Bluebonnet List.
    • 3/5
      Tobin McCauley does not have an easy time of it. His mom died five years ago, his father is hardly ever around (not even enough to keep groceries in the house), he doesn't have any friends, he doesn't even try to do more than pass his classes at school... But all that changes when he gets into a fight in gym class defending the honor of his English teacher. It's then that he meets Henry Otis, a charismatic boy who, for some reason, wants to be Tobin's friend. Henry talks Tobin into helping him raise chickens for an extra-credit project and somewhere along the way Tobin finds that things start falling into place. Little does he know how fragile that peace can be, though, and when something happens that tests his family, Tobin's not sure if they'll come through or be torn to pieces in the process.This book is about chickens. But on a deeper level it's about family. And love. And what keeps a family glued together. And what can tear them apart. From the book's description I was expecting something funny and light. This book certainly has its funny moments, but I would definitely not call it light. There's a lot of substance here.
    • 4/5
      Well crafted novel appropriate for any age YA, although older teens may better appreciate the quality of the writing. Told in the voice of Tobin, seventh grader whose family has disintegrated following the death of his Mom, Sandy, Chicken Boy begins with Tobin's Granny being arrested for a traffic violation as she brings him to school for the first day of the year. Tobin is befriended by Henry, a new kid in school, who wants help with his extra credit science project. The project is attempting to prove that chickens have souls. Tobin agrees to help with the project. Hank and his younger brother Harrison (who wants to rule the world via an egg selling empire) help Tobin with homework. As the book progresses, Tobin becomes more intersted in school, sports, eating, and other things that kids usually are interested in. His family also begins to heal from Sandy's death, but an ill timed call to social services threatens to take Tobin away from his family. An excellent book which made me cry, a first for a YA novel for this reader. :-)
    • 4/5
      I really wanted to hate this book. The main character, Tobin, is a Southern fried trailer trash. I immediately assumed he was little better than the chickens he raised: no brains, no work ethic, no dreams, and no pride. By the end of the novel, the author had turned my own prejudices against me. As Tobin comes to realize there’s more to chickens than meets the eye, the reader realizes the same about Tobin and his family. If chickens can have souls than maybe Southerners can too. (Aw, c’mon son. It’s a joke. Why some of my best friends are Southerners.)