Review Detail

How to Chat Chicken is a fun book of how animals communicate. It is divided by types of animals (by species, genus, family, etc.). There are over 60 very short chapters, but not every one is dedicated to an animal. Interspersed are chapters on processes such as "Stridulation," "Good Vibrations," How Do Baby Animals Learn to Talk?" and "Mimics." There’s even an explanation of dialect.
Each page spread features a scene of animals exhibiting different behaviors and an imitative speech bubble showing the sound the animal makes, a translation into English, and a caption explaining the communication.
I like how the author included information on how animals also use things like scent and body language to speak, as well.

The illustrations are brightly colored and highly cartoon-ish, we liked some better than others. The spreads are very busy, and kids get a kick of pointing different animal movements out.

With a table of contents, glossary, index and sources, this book could be a good choice for an early elementary grade book report, or is a quick enough read for someone visiting another home. Also makes for an interesting book to carry around your local zoo or farm to see what the animals are saying to one another.