Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz (Children's Literature)
In a zany text filled with pun-ny fun, Chicken and his friend George set off to find the barn in Chicken’s dream, where a treasure of cracked corn is buried under a pink pig. On their way, they exchange such gems as crossing the road to a playground “to get to the other slide,” and when threatened by a cat, “make like an egg on a hill…ROLL.” They reach the barn and find the pig, who dismisses their dream but tells one of his own. This inspires Chicken to go back home and dig there. The ending is indeed “Egg-stra-ordinary!” And “corny.” There is considerably “egg-stra” fun contributed by O’Malley’s finely-textured black ink drawings scanned and colored in Photoshop. Naturalistic settings contrast with the comic pair of fowls and their barnyard friends. The brief text is set in framed boxes, but the punch lines are delivered in heavily outlined speech balloons in a very bold typeface. The dancing corn ears on the cover and sailing across the end-pages only hint at the fun inside. 2007, Walker & Company, $16.95. Ages 5 to 10.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2007 (Vol. 75, No. 15))
Cornball comedy guaranteed to pun-ish your funny bone. One night Chicken has a dream about a treasure of cracked corn buried under a great pink pig. He tells his friend George, who says, "You must be yolking!," but the next day they set off to find the barn. Even though it's "Fry-Day," they dare to cross the road and escape a cat and a hawk attack. They travel all night and when the sunny side comes up, they find the barn and the great pink pig who asks why they want the corn. "Because it's what chickens grow on," says George. The pig replies, "I thought they grew on egg-plants." O'Malley hatches every fowl joke and riddle and then some. His deep-black-ink line illustrations with scanned-in color scratch in an etching-like texture and are egg-ceedingly entertaining. Details in the drawings play off the balloon dialogue, e.g., a bakery sign advertises "Coop Cakes." Scramble together bits of the comic cartoon picture books by M.J. Auch with pieces of the egg-zagerated humor of the movie Chicken Run and season with the wacky wit of Doreen Cronin and you have a frittata of fun. 2007, Walker, 32p, $16.95. Category: Picture book. Ages 5 to 9. Starred Review. © 2007 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Louise A. Capizzo (Library Media Connection, January 2008)
Lovers of corny puns will be egg-static for O'Malley's barnyard tale of following a dream. A chicken dreams of an immense treasure of cracked corn buried under a pink pig in a barn far away. Along with his friend George, the two male chickens set out on their quest. Upon arriving at the huge porker's barn, the pig relays his own dream of finding a treasure. In his dream the pig flies to a distant chicken coop and finds a cache of cracked corn buried beneath it. The pig didn't go looking for the treasure because, after all, it was just a dream. Feeling discouraged, the chickens go back to their coop. They do decide to dig and after some time they find the treasure of corn. After all, "when pigs fly you must follow your dream." Chicken jokes and play-on-words move the plot along, but may grow tiresome after several readings. However, the cartoon-like illustrations will have students who love egg-ceptionally silly yokes passing it around. Recommended. 2007, Walker and Company, 32pp., $16.95 hc. Ages 6 to 10.

Elizabeth Bush (The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, September 2007 (Vol. 61, No. 1))
A warning to those who regard the pun as the most ignoble form of humor: do not enter. O’Malley has borrowed the skeletal plotline of the Jewish folktale “The Rabbi’s Dream,” recast it with a pair of chickens (well, roosters, actually) and a pig, and set the chickens on a pun-intensive journey to find the treasure trove of corn that is supposedly buried under a pink pig in a faraway barn but is really back home in the coop. Chicken and George make plenty of stops along the way, all of which are blatant opportunities to unleash another groaner: “As they walked past a basketball court, they heard the referee call a foul. But he wasn’t talking to them.” If there’s a clean joke about a chicken, an egg, or corn, it’s probably in here, and listeners will find considerable satisfaction in anticipating the upcoming punchlines. Unfortunately, the jokes run out of steam a couple of pages short of the conclusion, and the final “corny dream” line just isn’t a worthy culmination to O’Malley’s previous lineup of chuckles. The ink line and computer-colored pictures have a dense, muddy tone that’s at odds with the goofiness of the quest, and the delicacy of fine pen hatching is overpowered by the heaviness of the hues. Still, you’ve got to love the deadpan expressions on Chicken and George as they play straight man and punster, and kids with the classic elementary school sense of hilarity will concur that it’s never a good idea for chickens to travel on “Fry-day.” . Review Code: Ad -- Additional book of acceptable quality for collections needing more material in the area. (c) Copyright 2006, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2007, Walker, 32p; Reviewed from galleys, $17.85 and $16.95. Ages 5-9 yrs.