Gr 2-4-Wonderfully creative handmade characters and sets are the highlight of this over-the-top chicken tale about a beauty shop, a vain Tom turkey, and Thanksgiving Day dinner. One day, a self-important turkey enters The Chic Hen and announces that he's been invited to a special dinner. When Beauty, the owner of the shop, discovers that he is not invited for dinner but as dinner, she and the other hens strategize to save the frantic fowl. Their best and final plan, to put him in a dress and save him from the oven, works well. Every word that begins with the letters "ex" (and there are many of them) are re-spelled to fit the theme: "eggsercise," "eggsploring," "eggstensive," etc. The book is filled with puns that will be understood by older children and adults. In one instance, a beauty shop customer is reading Miss Coop Living magazine and the two feature articles are "Feathering Your First Nest" and "Living on the Other Side of the Road." The illustrations are well worth poring over. The author made chicken mannequins with polymer eyes, beaks, and shoes, as well as wool wings and yarn feathers. Her husband designed the sets, built them, and photographed the images, adjusting their size. A humorous story about dressing a turkey, but not in the usual manner.-Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Here's a witty, wacky birdcentric story that redefines the term turkey dressing. When arrogant turkey Lance boasts that he is invited to an eggsclusive feast, Beauty the hen, owner of the Chic Hen beauty shop, flies to the farmhouse to investigate. While there she spies a cookbook, ominously featuring a recipe for roast turkey. Lance panics: Wattle I do? Beauty and her friends undertake an eggstreme makeover to hide Lance in plain sight, tweezing Lance's tail feathers and dressing him in a skirt and blouse and a flowered bonnet. Will Lance be saved or served? Silly humor and poultry puns abound in both text and visuals. The mixed-media art's madcap, colorful computer-enhanced characters, complete with googly eyes and fluffy feathers, playfully pose among amusingly detailed scanned objects and settings from Eggsit signs to chickers games. This quirky turkey-day story will make a lively read-aloud.--Rosenfeld, Shelle Copyright 2007 Booklist

Leaving no yolk uncracked, the Auchs strut their stuff once again with this Thanksgiving tale of an arrogant turkey and the goodhearted hens who take him under their wings. "Wattle I do?" wails Lance the turkey, upon discovering that he's about to become a main course. Because flying or even climbing the fence are not options, it's up to Beauty and her feathered cohorts at the Chic Hen salon to save his drumsticks--by disguising him as another hen. This requires a makeover of the most eggstensive sort. Constructed from modeling clay and various sorts of brightly hued sewn and felted fabrics, the stylish all-poultry cast clucks and flutters its way through scatterings of Photoshopped beauty supplies and farmyard details. Not only does the subterfuge work, it turns Lance into a regular, cross-dressing customer of the Chic Hen. Readers will cackle endlessly. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.