The Chickentown Mystery

his richly detailed story is a fun mystery filled with eerie disappearances and a huge twist at the end! In Chickentown, chickens are beloved family members. Our story sets out with only a few days until the golden feather competition where the Best Hen of the Year is crowned, a very coveted award. Suddenly though, chickens start vanishing from their home in the middle of the night! Clues are left behind after each disappearance, first footprints, then claw marks, then reddish fur and finally a shadow with pointy ears making it more and more clear that it may be a fox who is responsible for the disappearances.

After the fourth chicken goes missing, the town turns to their local witch, Miss Henrietta, and her much-loved chicken, Lucinda, to help solve the mystery. Casting a spell to illuminate the chicken thief if it tries to steal Lucinda, Miss Henrietta and her chicken Lucinda bravely lay in wait for the culprit. In the night, a fox does try to steal Lucinda causing Miss Henrietta’s spell to come to life and make the fox glow brightly! The glowing fox tries to get away, but, because he is glowing, the townfolk are able to follow him to a little house in the forest where all four chickens are found safe and sound. Unfortunately, the fox has gotten away…

The next day, Lucinda is awarded the Best Hen of the Year award for her bravery in helping solve the mystery. But, in a huge twist, readers see on the following page that it was, in fact, a sneaky Lucinda in a fox’s costume who was the chicken thief! Readers find out that Lucinda had devised the plan to steal the town’s beloved chickens in order to win the coveted award.

In The Chickentown Mystery which was translated from the original Spanish, author Albert Arrayás gives readers another exciting story that they are sure to enjoy trying to solve. The book is a fun read-aloud with built-in prompts for the kids to guess along the way: “Who could it belong to?” The illustrations are extremely detailed, and so it would work well as a longer storytime book or something for adults to read with children in their laps, taking time to explore each page and the possible clues that exist therein. Teachers will find this picture book useful in classroom discussions of storytelling, plot or character development, and follow-up activities could be easily adapted from the story.