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Review: 'Prairie Chicken Little' by Jackie Mims Hopkins

Prairie Chicken Little by Jackie Mims Hopkins, illustrated by Henry Cole, 2013, Peachtree Publishers, $15.95, hardbound, 30 pages. Category/Genre: mainstream. Cover: Action-oriented. Where we got it: publisher. Where you can get it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million.


A Texas twist on Chicken Little, this book has Mary McBlicken, the prairie chicken, running to tell Cowboy Stan and Red Dog Dan that there's a stampede coming. 

Younger readers will like the rhyming names and the way the story unfolds in repetition. Plus the names are very creative: Jeffrey Snog the prairie dog, Beau Grabbit the jack rabbit, June Spark the meadowlark, and Slim Brody the sly coyote round out the bunch. 

There's a perilous turn near the end, in which Slim nearly tricks Mary and her friends into becoming a meal for him -- but things turn out all right, and the ending is something kids will find humorous. 

Personally, we didn't care for the way some of the characters are depicted (the prairie dog, the jack rabbit, and the dog in particular), plus we didn't like the way the characters' mouths droop downward. But Cole's artwork is definitely expressive, and kids will likely warm to it. And the coyote and the horse, as well as the insects, were done quite well. 

Age range: 4-8. 

If you like this one, try: Suggestions? 

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Review: 'The Following: The Fall'

The Following: The Fall, 2013, Fox. Written by Shintaro Shimosawa. Directed by Marcos Siega. Starring Kevin Bacon, James Purefoy, Shawn Ashmore, and Annie Parisse. Rated TV-14 for language, sexual situations, dialogue, and violence. Airs 9.00 p.m. EST on Mondays.


This episode starts where the last one left off, with Ryan Hardy at gunpoint and in the kidnappers' custody. Here we see some nice interplay between Hardy and his captors as Hardy plays mind games to try to throw them off their game. He really knows how to get under their skins, particularly the men's; and whilst he's doing that, Debra Parker (Annie Parisse) tries to get inside Emma Hill's head. 

Unfortunately for the kidnappers, they are now surrounded by the FBI, SWAT, local police, the state police, and anyone and everyone else Parker can think of to call to the scene. And the kidnappers are definitely feeling the pressure. None of them knows quite what to do now that their plan has gone awry, and no help is forthcoming. 

Meanwhile, Claire Matthews has (quite stupidly) allowed herself to be driven to another location by Charlie Mead (Tom Lipinski, pictured), another of Joe Carroll's followers -- or, rather, one of hers. She believes she is going to see her son if she does what Mead says, but soon discovers things might not be that simple. 

In this episode, we learn more about Parker's background and why she turned to this line of work. We also find out that, like Joe Carroll, the writers have a few surprises in store. 

One thing about this series that can be off-putting (and which has cropped up in numerous reviews) is the fact that the police -- no matter how many there are or how prepared they are -- keep letting the bad guys slip through their fingers. It seems this is just something viewers will have to learn to accept (a bit of suspension of disbelief) if they want to accept the premise of the show itself, which is in part that Carroll's followers are everywhere. EVERYWHERE.