But you take this question a bit deeper with your first comment, about the style; we recognize it as being distinguished because we do get the parody. I think it’s true that someone who had no cultural references for this kind of storytelling might not recognize it as distinguished, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t, I think. There are lots of Newbery books that kids might read and wonder “why did THIS win the award?” about; the key is that they’ve just read some distinguished literature, even if they don’t recognize it as such yet. It’s easier for me to think of this in terms of the Caldecott. I remember vividly an elementary school librarian book-talking some Caldecott books, and holding up one and telling us that we might look at this and wonder why it was special because the drawings looked like they were easy to do, but that this was great art and we’d have to take her word for it right now. (I don’t know what the book was now, though I’d know it if I saw it.) I think it’s okay if kids aren’t able to recognize all the distinguished features of a book right away, as long as it’s still a good read for them.

A couple more chapter books to keep an eye out for: GOONEY BIRD ON THE MAP by Lois Lowry and SPUNKY TELLS ALL by Ann Cameron (two starred reviews). Anyone read either of them?

[irrelavent aside]
In some of the comments above some of you were refering to the story as a send up on film noir. I think it’s much more accurate to use the term hard boiled detective fiction (works of Hammett and Chandler being the most acclaimed).
Film noir really refers to the style and not neccessarily content. It’s not a genre per se more of a loose collection of post ww2 films recognizable by the heavy use of chiaroscuro lighting techniques. Yes many hard boiled detective novels were turned into films that we would consider film noir but there are an equally large number of films noir which do not feature detectives, cops, femmes fatale, or any of the other hard boiled detective fiction tropes seen in THE TROUBLE WITH CHICKENS.

Corin no doubt watch a number of hardboiled detective films that fall into the film noir style while writing TROUBLE WITH CHICKENS but i’m pretty sure she also went back to the source material (again Chandler and Hammett most likely) as well.

With THE TROUBLE WITH CHICKENS, if one of it’s strongest “distinguished” elements is it’s style, yet the style is a play off of film noir which many children might not be familiar of, does that hurt the book when discussing it as a Newbery?

And I actually wouldn’t be surprised if kids did pick up on the style and recognize it as a “black and white”, old-fashioned, voice over sort of detective book. They might not know the “term” film noir, but I think they’d recognize it for what it is. I’d fully endorse this one getting some discussion time on here!