cover image The Girl Who Ate Chicken Feet

The Girl Who Ate Chicken Feet

Sandy Richardson. Dial Books, $16.99 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-8037-2254-5

The many charming moments in Richardson's inaugural novel read more like a collection of southern tall tales, with 10-year-old Sissy at the center. The author's homespun mix of story lines about a goose, Gypsies, patent-leather shoes, the civil rights movement and various sketches about colorful 1960s South Carolina townsfolk, at times, has the effect of making Sissy into an observer in her own book. This is not a novel for readers who require a straightforward plot, but rather for those who wish to put up their feet and sit a spell. A few plot threads trail off or pick up so far down the line that they're frayed; for instance, the opening chapter mentions trouble ""[having] to do with the colored people down in Mississippi and Alabama,"" but not until the very end does the family cook, Elease, suddenly leave to join the civil rights movement. Bittersweet tales join comic ones: Sissy and her friend have their fortunes told by a band of Gypsies (who threaten to take Sissy's baby brother as payment); Sissy's cousin Delores convinces her to break into the church to help her pray for a baby sister to come; and the protagonist and Big Daddy trip up some Yankees on a duck-hunting excursion. Those readers who enjoy an entertaining yarn will find plenty to satisfy them here. Ages 10-up. (Apr.)