Adi Rule did, and she was right!

But, in true anti-journalistic style, before we get to ghost chickens, we gotta back up a little.

Back in April, I and my spouse went to the Derry Author Fest. I’ve gone for a couple of years now, and have been thoroughly impressed with the offerings from local and regional authors, all available for free!

It’s small, nowhere near the Boston Book Festival or NH Book Festival I went to recently, but Derry Author Fest is always packed with value in a tiny package. My first year, I saw Erin Bowman and Lita Judge, both of whom were fantastic presenters and I’ve continued to be impressed with their books time and time again.

For 2026, Derry Author Fest focused on Pathways to Publication, which both my spouse and I greatly appreciated. As writers in very different fields, we’ve been trying to plot out what lives as professional writers look like for us, what success means for us, what our reasonable and “dream” goals are for the next few years and beyond.

Publishing is a nebulous business. There are millions of ways to get published. Many of them won’t work for you specifically, even if they worked for someone else. Anyone *can* publish something. It doesn’t mean they will all be NY Times Bestselling authors (and winning that doesn’t even mean you are set for life). Or, on the other end of the scale, publishing something doesn’t me you will sell more than a hundred copies, unfortunately.

So, Pathways to Publication sounded perfect for us. The keynote presentation of the 2026 Derry Author Fest, “Reflections on Publishing Across Decades and Generations” by Becky and Adi Rule (mother and daughter) helped show us a version of what we wanted to see: lives with writing at the center in their own ways.

It, like the rest of the panels, were inspiring.

Fast forward a couple of months. My spouse and I are still working on our dreams, making progress in small and bigger steps. We attended the NH Book Festival along with a few others this month, which you can read more about here.

And Becky and Adi Rule were on the program schedule again, with a similar presentation, this time with David and Eli Elliott, a father and son duo on “All in the Family: Writing Through Generations.”

This deja vu event pushed me to do what I probably should have done back in April: pick up Adi Rule’s Ghost Chickens Omelet From the Other Side. It’s not that I didn’t want to pick up Ghost Chickens in April. There just always seems to be so many good options at the bookstore or these literary events and I have to whittle my list down every time. I’m so glad I listened this time.

Fast forward a few weeks…

The morning after a concert, I was running a little slow. I also had a writing group that night, so I would be working late anyway. A slow morning was okay. My eyes scanned my “To Read” bookshelf, searching for something to read as I sipped my coffee and let myself wake up.

Ghost Chickens Omelet From The Other Side called out to me. I wish, especially after reading it, that I could say it called out with

“A single, ghostly…

Cluck!“

–pg 27 of Ghost Chickens Omelet From the Other Side by Adi Rule, 2026 paperback

Alas, it was something closer to a whisper of “I’ll be fun!”

And that it was. There’s something so naturally, simply fun about Adi’s book. Her main character, ten-year-old aspiring journalist Florence Fortescue, is so relatable, and easy to insert ourselves into her shoes. This is likely partially due to the fact, as Adi and Becky talked about in their presentation, that Adi used to write her own newspaper at a young age.

Florence is met with a common, but nonetheless devastating change in her life: moving. In this case, it’s from the city to the country and Florence is not happy about it for a number of reasons that she dives into in the first chapter. Little does she know how she’ll be drawn into the countryside’s charm… and poultry afterlife.

I didn’t grow up on a farm. Despite being in a state that is known for being pretty rural, I also grew up in a city. I had experiences on farms such as horseback riding lessons as a kid and I met quite a few “country kids” at my college, which literally has “agriculture” in its name and is pretty rural itself despite the modern college town that has cropped up over the decades.

Point is, I did not grow up with chickens, but this book felt very real from everything I’ve heard from people who have chickens. The poultry hauntings are simultaneously creepy, slightly overwhelming when necessary, and cute and wonderful, evidenced by the first “sighting” while she and her dad are cleaning out a dirty pool in the backyard of their new house and coming up with new song together.

“But just as I’m about to come up with another lyric, I see something at the other end of the pool.

It’s bobbing int he water, kind of round like a soccer ball. I blink. It’s…

… a chicken!

But it’s no ordinary chicken. It’s looking at me with its beady chicken eyes and fluffing its white chicken feathers, but as I stare back, I realize… I can see the stone wall of the pool behind it. THROUGH it. It is a transparent chicken.

A GHOST CHICKEN!”

pg 46 of Ghost Chickens Omelet From the Other Side by Adi Rule, 2026 paperback

How does Florence deal with these paranormal cluckers? The solution, of course, is simple: write an expose on the incident. It doesn’t go as planned.

“Dad finishes reading my sensational article and looks up. “I think ‘ghost chickens’ are a little scary for you,” he says, which is wrong. Ghost chickens are a little scary for him. I, on the other hand, am a fearless journalist. But that’s not the biggest problem.

The biggest problem is that neither of them believes me. No, not even with Bob [one of the ghost chickens] on my head.”

— pg 56 of Ghost Chickens Omelet From the Other Side by Adi Rule, 2026 paperback

But, this goes deeper than just her being gifted the proverbial poultry sight, as she details with her best friend, and former newspaper founder, Jupiter Lee, later that night on the phone.

“I know I have to tell Jupiter Lee the truth, but it’s hard to admit it to myself. “And… they still didn’t believe me.”

Another gasp. “No!”

“Yes.”

“Haven’t they heard of journalistic integrity?”

“Apparently not.”

“Do they think you would print LIES like some AMATEUR?”

“It seems that way.”

We are outraged together for a moment, saying nothing. This is why we’re best friends.”

–pg 59 of Ghost Chickens Omelet From the Other Side by Adi Rule, 2026 paperback

Adi Rule does a fantastic job of integrating the journalist into the ten-year-old throughout this book, showing why these new developments are both exciting as well as frustrating, especially as her parents (and other adults) continue to assume she is simply a child with an overactive imagination when she is telling the truth and is a journalist with integrity.

The naivete and sheer determination of children flows throughout, making this a fantastic read. It is also a reminder to focus on the kid (both simpler and more complicated than we tend to think) at the center of the story, the big feelings that can overwhelm, and the jokes that happen along the way in life.

But I’ll let you figure out all that for yourself.

If you have a chance, I highly recommend picking up Adi Rule’s Ghost Chickens Omelet From the Other Side whether it’s from the local library or bookstore. It’s a fantastic Middle Grade Read!

What have you been reading lately? What “lessons” have you gleaned?