Booklist Review of HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6

My new book HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6 will be published next week on January 10th and has already received a number of very positive advance reviews.The following review appeared in Booklist, December 1, 2016

Readers are in for a treat as they join Mrs. Best and her kindergarten class for their egg-hatching project, aka the most adorable class project ever. Mrs. Best has brought a variety of chicken eggs–brown, white, speckled–from her backyard coop to an incubator in her classroom in order to teach her students about how chicks grow. The informative text is augmented by copious photo illustrations, including a diagram of the different parts of an egg, a demonstration of candling (placing a fertilized egg over a light to see inside it) and eventually the fluffy chicks themselves. The book documents how Mrs. Best’s diverse class counts down the 21 days until the eggs hatch, the hatching process, and the first month of the chicks’ lives, detailing their care and growth, and nesting quick facts in egg-shaped ovals throughout. Readers will come away with a good understanding of chickens origins and will likely want to rush off to hatch an egg of their own, but Arnold wisely cautions that chickens do not make good pets. (Julia Smith)