Chicken Boy by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Tobin McCauley arrives at his first day of seventh grade with a bang. His grandmother has just driven him to school but must have forgotten that the sidewalk is not a parking spot. But I seriously doubted she forgot. I think she knew what she did. The rest of his family is also pretty familiar with the law as well. His two brothers and sister have just been caught for misdemeanors like petty theft but still. The word McCauley is always treated with expectancy of some trouble. So when he is caught in a fight even without knowing that he was defending his teacher's honor after only the second week of school everyone instantly blames him. And he gets suspended but out of that he gains a friend who is a talker. He's loud, friendly, and generally a good guy. Another thing about him, Henry, is that he has some chickens and those chickens according to him have a soul. Everything starts looking up at school with him finally having a friend but of course it turns for the worse. Now he's just trying to figure out where he stands in all of it.

It looks like I have a thing for eggs and I need to find more books with eggs in them because they all turn out wonderful. Tobin is this quiet nice kid. He acts tough and when he actually does something good he feels this buzzing/ tingling whatever you want to call it sense when he fought for his English teacher. And then he starts to feel good about himself which made me love him to death. I even got used to him saying son all the time. It didn't matter anymore when I got deeper into his story.

His family is a bit crazy. Well the crazy part is his grandmother but she means well. She blames his father for not doing enough for her daughter who died of cancer. He was really close to his mom (like Eggs by Jerry Spinelli) and he took it hard. His siblings aren't really there for him and neither is his dad. He can only really talk to his grandmother. I would cringe whenever she brought up how no good his father was and basically just bringing up his mother's death in front of him. I cringed for him because seriously why would you talk about it freely? I'm sure it hurt him. His father never got over her. His house is a mess and they never have food. I'll feed you! He really got to me. I loved his demeanor. He was the prefect protagonist.

His new friend Henry was probably the complete opposite of him but he wasn't at all bad. He had good morals and was what he really needed. His little brother Harrison reminded me so much of school because he was so into entrepreneurship. There was running in this book as well and I love runners so no wonder I loved this book but of course it was more than that. I had a pretty bad book before this and then a eh book. I guess I was just building up for a really great one and didn't even know it. And for that I am grateful.

And now for quotes! I'll be definitely adding to them to Goodreads which I've never done before but will most likely be doing from now on. I won't put the spoiler type ones on here.

"4. If you do not give your chickens enough space, light, air, and walking-around room, they will eat one another."

"Quit it already. I'm pretty enough as it is."

"I'm not done arguing with you, Mrs.Fletcher. I'm going to convince you yet." "Well I reckon I got ten or twenty more years in me before I pass on," Granny told him. "So feel free to take your time."

"I have to say, it felt good to be wanted, son. Felt real good."