The Chicken Doesn't Skate

Korman, Gordon

ISBN 10: 0590853007 ISBN 13: 9780590853002

Publisher: Scholastic, 1996

Synopsis

Henrietta, a baby chick who is part of a sixth-grade science fair experiment, becomes the mascot for the South Middle School Rangers's hockey team, and her fate depends on an important championship game.

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Reviews

Grade 4-6-Prolific Korman once again successfully employs his tried-and-true formula: zany situations; a fast pace; likable, well-drawn characters; contemporary dialogue; and lots of humor. In this current offering, he combines several unlikely sixth-graders from Minnesota's South Middle School, including a hotshot hockey star; an animal-rights activist steeped in pop psychology; a computer nerd who writes slimy, bloody screenplays; and a young scientist trying to fit into a new school as well as impress his Nobel Prize-winning scientist father. When a chicken named Henrietta, the key component of Milo Neal's science-fair project on food chains, also becomes the hockey team's mascot and only chance at winning the championship, conflict ensues. Feelings escalate when the students realize that Milo's plan for completing the link in the chain actually involves fried chicken, and a series of highly improbable but very funny events occur. That computer nerd Zach, who has never been on the team, is discovered to be an awesome goalie is perhaps the biggest stretch of all, and yet perfect in the context of the book. Similarly, the resolution is neat, pat, and yet satisfying. Told from alternating first-person perspectives that nicely reveal lots about each character, the novel is sure to appeal to Korman's many fans who are willing to suspend disbelief for a rollicking story.
Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4^-6. The South Middle School Rangers hockey team is in a serious slump until a wayward chicken named Henrietta, who belongs in a cage in Mrs. Baggio's science room, finds itself sitting on the Rangers' bench. A mascot is born. But Henrietta, the key ingredient in Milo Neal's science-fair project, "The Complete Life Cycle of a Link in the Food Chain," has a date with destiny. Milo plans to eat Henrietta on the floor of the science fair, thus completing his link in the food chain. Using alternating first-person narrators, Korman tells the hilarious story of how a group of kids with little in common--the hockey star, the class dweeb, the animal-rights activist--are thrown together in the hullabaloo over Henrietta's fate. Korman has the voices of these middle-school kids down cold; the silly chicken humor works because the kids' reactions--their 12-year-old cynicism, their pubescent ruthlessness, their oh-so-carefully-hidden vulnerability--are as real as the main plot is outrageous. This is a genuinely funny, refreshingly unpretentious novel. Bill Ott

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0590853007
• ISBN 13: 9780590853002
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 197