POULTRYGEIST

🇬🇧 Description:

It’s punny. It’s spooky. It’s a meta picture book that puts a fresh spin on an old joke and elevates chicken comedy to ghastly new levels. A little spring chicken crosses the road but quickly gets flattened under a lorry. The barnyard beasts who’ve gone before break the news: now that Chicken’s fried – dispatched to the Other Side – Chicken has a job, an unwanted job, as a noisy trouble-making ghost. This fowl may be weak in the beak, but Chicken knows that scaring people isn’t nice. There is such a thing as a friendly ghost, after all – isn’t there? Loaded with laughs and shivers, this Halloween-ready treat features ghoulishly funny art by the illustrator of the #1 New York Times best-selling Bad Seed series. Let the haunting begin!

Reviews:

The chicken crosses the road…and arrives on the other side as a ghost. . . . Oswald’s illustrations display masterful use of color, with bright, ghostly animals against a dark, often all-black background, the dialogue shown in colors that correspond to the speakers. These ghosts do become scary but not enough to completely terrorize readers. Oswald’s skill is seen in full effect, as readers witness only the animal ghosts’ reactions to the poultrygeist’s scariest face, building suspense for the full reveal. This book is just right for kids easing into the slightly scary and macabre but who still want a safe and fun read.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Thanks to a passing semi, a chicken crossing the road definitely gets to the Other Side—but rejects the insistence of hovering deer, possum, and other fellow roadkill that it’s payback time. . . Young audiences may have different views, though, and Oswald obliges by crafting cartoon images of spectral wildlife with staring, glaring eyes and shark-like teeth, and also making use of page turns to work dramatic “jump!”–worthy changes of size and expression.
—Booklist

An amusing concept and attendant wordplay (“Show a little pluck, Cluck!”) by debut author Geron gets a big assist from Oswald’s marvelous digital illustrations: intricate, iridescent textures; fluorescent colors; and lots of comic exaggeration evoke a spectral world that’s also reassuringly silly.
—Publishers Weekly