Extraordinary Warren: A Super Chicken

November 25, 2013
Warren, the self-important chicken of the title, doesn’t realize that Millard the rat is flattering him because he’s considering eating Warren for dinner. “I think I might be a special chicken!” Warren confides. Millard gushes right back: “It is possible you could even be... Chicken Supreme!” Fortunately, Warren spots Millard’s cookbook, 1001 Recipes for Chicken, and when he discovers that Millard has plans for the rest of the flock, he gets to be the superhero he’s always dreamed of being. Dillard (Perfectly Arugula) has a solid grasp of the possibilities of sequential art, drawing panels that break up physical processes like learning to fly (where Warren runs into some trouble) and following Warren as he trudges over a hill, ruminating about his failure to warn the flock. Warren’s sidekick, an egg who eventually hatches, is the story’s sweetest surprise: “Is this farm the whole world or is there more?” the chick asks. “Did you know that I’d be so yellow and fuzzy?” A good-humored story that nicely blends picture book, chapter book, and graphic novel elements. Ages 6–9. Agent: Lori Nowicki, Painted Words.

December 15, 2013
This is a story that keeps interrupting itself. A few pages into the comic, the narration is drowned out by sound effects. A flock of chicks keeps squawking for two pages straight. It happens right in the middle of a sentence: "They pecked all day long. EVERY SINGLE DAY. It drove Warren...Peep! Peck! Peck! Peck! / CRAZY." (Eight nearly identical panels labeled Sunday through Sunday show four chicks peeping and pecking, as Warren looks on with increasing exasperation.) This is, presumably, supposed to be an amusing, postmodern device, but mostly it's just an annoyance. In fairness, it's supposed to be annoying. Warren hates the daily routine on the farm. He says, "I've had enough pecking and peeping....I am MORE than just an ORDINARY CHICKEN." Warren becomes a sort of poultry superhero, rescuing the others from Millard the rat, who has invited them all to a barbecue. Large sections of the plot may feel familiar. The book feels much like the film Chicken Run, for example. But the story isn't the point. The point is the jokes, which are terrible and brilliant in equal measure. When Warren bumps into an egg, he says, "OEUF!" The simple line drawings are charming. The text is a matter of taste. It will be a hit with fans of borscht-belt humor. Everyone else may be driven...CRAZY. (Graphic fiction. 6-9)

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2014
Grades 2-4 Bespectacled Warren is bored by his fellow chicks, who only peck chick feed and peep. He strikes out looking for adventure to prove how extraordinary he really is, and in the course of six chapters, he finds a conniving rat, an egg he adopts as his superhero sidekick, and definitive proof that he is no ordinary chicken at all. Dillard allows her clever tale to unfold in both sentences and cartoon panels. This combined approach amplifies Warren's wry observations of his surroundings and peers, such as the egg, the rat, a duck, and a hungry fox. The brightly hued illustrations depict a wide variety of emotion and clever props, like the fox's suspicious chicken cookbook and the duck's coaching whistle, which looks remarkably like his own hat. There's even a bilingual pun, along with a handful of silly food jokes. The simple text, usually only appearing in one or two sentences, is easy enough for beginning readers. Warren has all the imagination of Rebecca Purcell's Super Chicken! (2013) but with some added sly sophistication, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)