The Chicken Squad Analysis

Text Features Assignment

The First Misadventure (The Chicken Squad, Book #1) by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Kevin Cornell is the story of four little chicks: Dirt, Sugar, Poppy, and Sweetie who live in the backyard along with a retired search and rescue dog named J.J. Tully. J.J. tries to keep them out of trouble but often takes naps and that is when the trouble starts. When an adorable, though frightened squirrel named Tail enters the yard yelling “Help!” the chicks do their best to solve Squirrel’s ‘problem’. J.J. reappears at the end of the story to help solve the mystery. I really enjoyed this book. It is filled with humor causing me to laugh out loud many times as I read. The chick’s quirky personalities added to the enjoyment.

The Lexile measure is 290L indicating the reading ability and text difficulty between 1st and 2nd grade. The Developmental Reading Assessment, a tool used by instructors to identify a students reading level, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension is 24, which is mid 2nd grade. Scholastic Book Wizard lists Pirates Past Noon’s interest level at grades 3 – 5. This is a chapter book. It has ten chapters and has 67 pages. It has six full-page illustrations. All illustrations are done in black and white. Only nine pages have illustrations on half of the page with text on the other half. The font size looks to be at 12. There is more text on most pages than white space and sometimes the picture is on the bottom half and sometimes it’s on the top. Words that are emphasized are italicized. The dialect of the pirates such as ‘lubber’ and ‘cap’n’ might make it hard for a reader to understand but also adds to the story. Some prior knowledge of pirates would be helpful. Full pages vary from 118 to 128 words per page. There aren’t any word bubbles used. This book had much more text than pictures, which might make it difficult for younger readers. There aren’t a lot of difficult words but new words are introduced and then reinforce with repetition. I personally feel like Pirates Past Noon was a more difficult book to read than The 1st Misadventure due to the story line and the amount of text on each