Chicken Mission: Chaos in Cluckbridge

Jennifer Gray's Chicken Mission: Chaos in Cluckbridge is a daft, fast animal adventure for 8 year olds about three kung fu chickens and a queen cobra on the loose.

What happens

Amy Cluckbucket is a small brown chicken with fluffy grey tummy feathers and scrawny pink legs, and courage is her special skill. With her friends Boo and Ruth she's part of an elite squad trained at the Kung Fu School of Poultry in Tibet, and their job is protecting chickens from predators. They've already seen off the villainous Thaddeus E. Fox twice, so this isn't where the series starts.

They're about to fly off on holiday (by albatross) when Professor Rooster calls. Cleopatra the queen cobra has slipped out of the city zoo. She can hypnotise with one look, she's about to lay a nest full of eggs, and she eats chickens. Boo takes the news hardest, and we soon find out why.

Meanwhile Thaddeus has been sulking in his messy burrow in a grubby dressing gown. His posh old school pal Snooty Bush talks him into a trip to the city, a dinner for the Society of Enterprising Foxes and a very nasty business plan. Guess who turns up as the surprise guest?

It's stuffed with silly gadgets (Ruth's self-packing suitcase packs her glasses by mistake) and puns. Amy is great company too. She'd much rather play Chicken World Wrestling 3 than read a book, and she's properly gutted to miss her holiday.

There's real feeling underneath the jokes. Amy's first trip home in months doesn't go how she hoped, and her dad gently suggests her old friends might just be shy of her now.

One darker thread is worth flagging. Boo and her Aunt Mildred were once battery hens, and Boo's mum was sent to the zoo as food for Cleopatra. It's told briefly and kindly, as something that happened long ago, but a chicken-loving child might want a cuddle after that chapter. The foxes also plan cheerfully to eat pet chickens.

What to read next

If they love animal villains who take themselves far too seriously, Jennifer Gray also wrote Atticus Claw Breaks the Law. The world's greatest cat burglar is summoned to a sleepy seaside town by a gang of magpies.