Become who you are...When her best friend is left behind by his flock, a young chickadee named Katie decides it's up to her to help him, even it means flying all the way to Winterland, far off to the south. That's what friends are for after all. There's just one problem. Black-Capped Chickadees don't migrate! Katie has to overcome her natural instincts as she departs on a wild cross-country adventure, all while helping her little brother through a truly unique identity crisis.Armed (or winged) with not much more than the baffling advice of a wise, but confusing, owl, the young friends find themselves up against bird-watching alley cats, a hurricane, and two humans whose motives for pursuing the birds are a mystery. Along the way, they make new friends, discover who they are, and what it means to be flock.

These are poems about the anxiety of what must be traded for the comfort of the flock. "Flock books" allow farmers to register and track livestock, and these poems survey the anxieties of that registry: the comfort of shelter as trade for living under the weight of threats--of removal, conformity, or one's own urge to stray. Katie Umans has an MFA from the University of Michigan, was a Ruth and Jay C. Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and received a 2010 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

When longtime illustrator and lover of power tools Lauren Scheuer was looking for a project, she got the idea to raise backyard chickens. Her husband and teenage daughter looked on incredulously as coop sketches and chicken-raising books filled their New England home. But when the chicks arrived, the whole family fell in love with the bundles of fluff and the wild adventures began. Once Upon a Flock: Life with My Soulful Chickens stars Scheuer’s backyard chickens—with their big personalities, friendships, rivalries, and secrets—and the flock’s guardian, Marky the terrier. The flock includes Hatsy, the little dynamo; Lil’White, the deranged and twisted Buff Orpington; Pigeon, the fixer-upper chicken; and Lucy, the special-needs hen who bonds with Lauren and becomes a fast friend. This charming story of Lauren’s life with her quirky flock is filled with moments of humor and heartbreak: When Lucy is afflicted with a neurological disease, Lauren builds Lucy a special-needs coop. When Lucy’s nesting instinct leads Lauren to act as a chicken midwife of sorts, Lauren hatches a chick in her home. And when Lucy’s best friend Hatsy falls ill, Lauren finds an unlikely friend for Lucy in a chicken named Pigeon, who requires an emergency bath and blow-dry. Enthusiastically immersing herself in the world of her flock, Lauren discovers that love, loss, passion, and resilience are not only parts of the human experience, but of the chicken experience as well. Throughout it all, Lauren documents the laughter and drama of her flock’s adventures with her own whimsical photos and illustrations. At once humorous, poignant, and informative, Once Upon a Flock is a feathered tale like no other.

From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Jane Austen Book Club," the story of an American family, ordinary in every way but one--their close family relative was a chimpanzee.