Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer: List 1

by Kelly Jones
When twelve-year-old Sophie Brown moves from a California city to a farm her dad has inherited, she is determined to learn how to raise the chickens she finds.

This list covers pages 1–59 of the 2016 Yearling edition.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3
25 words 127 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. catalog
    a book or pamphlet containing an enumeration of things
    I can’t find your website anywhere, so Mom said I should write you a business letter and request a catalog.
  2. poultry
    domesticated birds raised for meat or eggs
    Your flyer says you have Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer. I don’t know what would make a chicken unusual, so maybe you’ll send me your catalog and then I can stop wondering about them.
  3. tarp
    a sheet of waterproofed canvas
    The hayloft doesn’t have any hay in it now. It’s filled up with old furniture and dust and things in wooden boxes and under plastic tarps.
  4. racket
    a loud and disturbing noise
    With the shutters open, I can look out down the driveway at the street, and hear the birds making a racket.
  5. freeway
    a broad highway designed for high-speed traffic
    I can’t leave the farm without telling Mom or Dad, and they haven’t been in very good moods lately, and the street in front of the farm is a highway. (But it only has one lane each way, so it’s not a freeway, even though cars can drive fast on it—did you know that could happen?)
  6. eventually
    after an unspecified period of time or a long delay
    But, if you look hard, sometimes you see little tiny green balls that Dad says will turn into real grapes eventually.
  7. prune
    cultivate, tend, and cut back the growth of
    “You can see these are totally overgrown,” he told me, showing me how our grapevines had long green stems springing out everywhere and getting in the way, but the ones over the fence on our neighbors’ vineyard kept their vines to themselves. Then he started pruning one.
  8. weld
    join together by heating
    Dad says it’s where Great-Uncle Jim used to weld things together to make new equipment and invent things for his farm.
  9. trellis
    latticework used to support climbing plants
    Don’t worry, I got out my work gloves and my safety goggles, like the first day Dad took me out to do some work with him, before he figured out he didn’t know how to work any of the machinery and we didn’t have money for fence posts or trellis wire.
  10. barbed
    having or covered with protective points, spines, or thorns
    So I took a big long stick and started poking the piles, watching out for the loose lengths of rusty barbed wire that sprang out at me sometimes when stuff shifted, and looked to see what was there.
  11. rustle
    make a dry crackling sound
    It was a little creepy, all abandoned like that, and when the blackberry bush rustled, I ran back toward the barn and decided that was enough exploring.
  12. rural
    living in or characteristic of farming or country life
    She and Dad have a deal where she’s pretending she’s on a rural writer’s retreat and getting her writing work done.
  13. glare
    look at with a fixed or angry gaze
    And a little white chicken was standing in front of it, glaring at it, first with one eye and then with the other.
  14. wilt
    become limp
    So I ran back to the house, and very quietly got some wilted lettuce and an apple. They seemed like something a chicken might eat.
  15. perch
    sit, as on a branch
    But when I looked, Henrietta was inside, perched on a branch.
  16. sensible
    showing reason or sound judgment
    She opened one eye and looked mad. So I turned and ran all the way back to the house and locked our front door. I think you’d agree that was only sensible.
  17. cursive
    handwriting in which letters are connected within words
    Sorry to hear about your typewriter. It’s fine with me if you want to write by hand. Maybe you should print, though, so I can read it? My grandmother’s cursive was terrible—no one could read it, so we can’t make any of her recipes now.
  18. manual
    a small handbook
    Do you have a manual or something? On special chickens, I mean? I already got a library book on how to take care of regular chickens.
  19. diminutive
    very small
    Bantam White Leghorn
    Diminutive height, white plumage, yellow featherless legs and feet.
  20. plumage
    the covering of feathers on a bird
    Bantam White Leghorn
    Diminutive height, white plumage, yellow featherless legs and feet.
  21. squawk
    make a harsh, abrupt noise
    Henrietta didn’t like that one bit. She started squawking.
  22. hesitate
    pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness
    The woman hesitated, and I saw Mom’s eyes narrow again.
  23. insist
    be emphatic or resolute and refuse to budge
    So I got out my whistle, the one my mom insists I wear everywhere, and I gathered every bit of breath I had left after running and screaming, and I blew that thing.
  24. philosophy
    the rational investigation of existence and knowledge
    But, when I asked if there could be ways he didn’t know about, he said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Sophie Brown, than are dreamt of in our philosophies.”
  25. chortle
    laugh quietly or with restraint
    Once she got busy with that, she stopped squawking and started making her little chortling noises again.
Created on Wed Mar 15 15:58:22 EDT 2023 (updated Wed Mar 22 16:20:26 EDT 2023)

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