Chicken Dance

Tammi Sauer and Dan Santat have whipped up a giddy, goofy romp where cows fly over the moon, ducks surf in a water trough, and one very familiar-looking rooster gets all shook up!

Meet Marge and Lola, chickens on a mission: to win tickets for the Elvis Poultry Show! But their toughest competition—a pack of menacing ducks—sneers that “all a chicken can do is bawk, flap, and shake.” Can our two feisty chicks show those quackers how to rock ’n’ roll the barnyard?

Tammi Sauer and Dan Santat have whipped up a giddy, goofy romp where cows fly over the moon, ducks surf in a water trough, and one very familiar-looking rooster gets all shook up!

Publishers Weekly

Move over, Susan Boyle: the next talent-that-comes-out-of nowhere is a pair of chickens named Marge and Lola. They're determined to win tickets to see a performance of their idol, Elvis Poultry. But they'll have to place first in the barnyard talent show—outscoring acts that include a trio of goats that eat a tractor onstage and cows that jump over the moon—and humiliate their snotty duck rivals. “Get some floaties, chickens!” shout the ducks after the chickens test their swimming prowess with unsuccessful results (“They totally sank”). With snappy banter (“We're on,” says Marge as their turn on the stage arrives. “We're doomed,” replies Lola) and tightly constructed storytelling, Sauer (Cowboy Camp) pulls off the neat trick of both embracing and spoofing the against-all-odds genre. Totally in sync with his collaborator, Santat's (Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo) sculptural, mixed media pictures exude an old-fashioned, theatrical drama that lifts the many jokes—visual and textual—into sublime silliness. Ages 4–7. (Aug.)

Tammi Sauer is the author of the best-selling Cowboy Camp (Sterling, 2005), which was a 2006 finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award; selected for Nevada Young Readers’ Award Reading List for 2007; and selected by the Oklahoma Center for the Book as the premier Oklahoman title at the 2007 National Book Festival. She is an active blogger (www.tammisauer.com) and highly involved in the children’s writer community. Tammi graduated from Kansas State University with a BA in Elementary Education and has worked as a teacher and library media specialist.

Dan Santat is both author and illustrator of The Guild of Geniuses (Arthur A Levine Books, 2004).which was a Society of Illustrators Original Art Show Selection and won the Los Angeles Society of Illustrators Bronze Medal for Book Illustration. In addition, Dan illustrated Rhea Perlman’s Otto Undercover series (Katherine Tegan Books/HarperCollins) and The Secret Life of Walter Kitty, written by Barbara Jean Hicks (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2007). Find out more at www.dantat.com.