Kristen Darbyshire

The story of a chicken family of four and their grocery shopping troubles, Put It On the List is fun for both kids and adults. Kids will find the mismatches suggested when a proper item is missing hilarious and gross (Pancakes, no syrup? How about ketchup!), while adults will recognize the "joys" of grocery shopping with kids and enjoy the deadpan humor. Darbyshire's illustrations (Done in acrylics? No illustration note, boo.) are delightfully offbeat, particularly her chickens with their spindly legs and not-quite-oval heads. Bright, solid colors provide full-bleed backdrops, some textured, to the simple compositions which are full of funny side-joke touches.

While this worked fairly well as a group read-aloud, reading it independently or one-on-one would probably work even better as that leaves time to notice the funny little details like the recurring joke of a pony showing up on the grocery list that gets an illustrated payoff at the end of the book. The humor is definitely beyond toddlers, so use this with preschool and grade school groups; I think it could easily stretch all the way up to 3rd grade, and maybe as high as fourth or fifth due to some potty humor (No toilet paper! Ewww!).

This is exactly the type of off-kilter humor that appeals to me in picture books and could work well paired with something like [b:Ugly Fish|421118|Ugly Fish|Kara LaReau|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174590712s/421118.jpg|410246] or simply in a chicken or food themed storytime program.

Used for Chickens on the Loose Storytime - Preschool 2/2/2010 and Family 2/4/2010.… (meer)