Kung Pow Chicken by Cyndi Marko

How do you like your chicken?

I like my chicken spicy. But, if you prefer your chicken funny, full of puns and poultry word-plays, you’ll love Kung Pow Chicken.

Gordon Blue (great name for a chicken) was just an ordinary second grader until he fell into a vat of toxic sludge and gained super powers. He has heightened chicken senses, a powerful peck and his wings can whip up a storm.

All he needed was a superhero name and suit to match and he was ready to use his powers to right wrongs, fight crime and keep his room tidy.

Crime fighting’s not all it’s cracked-up to be!

As both the author and illustrator, Cyndi Marko tells the series through a combination of wonderful illustrations and prose, making this series ideal for early readers.

Throughout the series, our crime-fighter becomes famous, but life as a superhero isn’t all it is cracked up to be. He can’t tell his friends who he is and sometimes fighting bad guys makes him late for dinner.

All good superheros have a sidekick

Like many superheros, Gordon has a sidekick, Benny, aka Egg Drop, who also fell into the toxic slime and has an extra hard shell. But Benny often feels left out because Kung Pow Chicken gets all the attention.

Overall, this quirky series is good for a giggle. The stories are wonderfully written and set out, but it doesn’t take itself too serious, and the jokes are quite corny. Just how I like my jokes. Perfect for the reader starting out – only 80 pages or around 2500-words in length, ideal for ages 5 years and up.

Kung Pow Chicken has been translated into Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, Spanish (US, forthcoming), and Czech.

To learn more about this wonderfully funny Canadian author’s work, including the awards Kung Pow Chicken has won, you can check out her website here: https://www.cyndimarko.com/

To check out all the Kung Pow Books, or find out more about this awesome and funny series by Scholastic, click here: https://www.scholastic.com/branches/kungpowchicken.htm

Details

Title: Kung Pow Chicken
Author and Illustrator: Cyndi Marko
Publisher: Scholastic Inc., 2014