Review: Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen

Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same:The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen


The Scoop:


What's there to say? Sloane Tanen creates super cute dioramas featuring super cute chicks in entertaining situations. Since, in this instance, goodreads can explain it better here goes: 


With more personality than most people have to spare, New York artist Sloane Tanen's tiny yellow chickens negotiate the tricky modern world, filled with three-headed blind dates, menacing KFCs, playground popularity battles, and annoyingly crowded yoga classes. They perch amid doll furniture, in scenes photographed in glorious color and brilliantly captioned- and their lives will strike you as strangely familiar...

Charming, spiky with off-kilter wit (or waxing jobs gone terribly wrong), and somehow larger than life, these chickens win the hearts of all who behold them. 


And to intrigue you even further here is a tease of what you can find within the pages.

My Thoughts:

I first came across this book by way of her children's books. And, really, who doesn't think chicks aren't cute? Not me. I love chickens. I'll prove it--just look at my own personal flock:

l-r: Caramel, Black Ghost, Phantom, RC (for Robot Chicken), Bo Peep & Butter

Anyway, this is a cute, clever, quick read that packs a punch and not a few laughs. It usually takes a bit of blatant humor to elicit a good chuckle from me (Carter Finally Gets It and Swim the Fly are two books I read that packed in huge giggles) but several could be heard while I was reading this creatively humorous collection of chick life adventures.


The dioramas, while mostly simply staged, had a lot of fun or cute details and really told the story. On some of them the captions were definitely needed but in a lot of them I could tell what was going on. I'm glad the captions were there because they were funnier than what I probably could have made up, though. The author was sarcastic and snarky with humor and dry wit in just the right spot. It was a pleasing, amusing and creative quick read but definitely geared towards teens and adults (the cutesy chickens may seem like perfect fodder for the little kiddies but the stories they tell. . .). I enjoy the use of miniatures in creative ways and this was one of the better (and funnier) ways I've seen them put to use.