Chickens! Let me show you them.

The Fairest Fowl is a collection of photos of championship chickens, taken by Tamara Staples; each chicken is accompanied by a page devoted to its breed's vital stats and info about the judging process, and there are some general photos from poultry shows mixed in there, too. At the very end is my favorite part, an essay (which was originally a bit for "This American Life") by Ira Glass about Staples's chicken-photography process.

I initially checked this book out to see if it would help me figure out what kind of chickens we have, but it wasn't really useful for that, since most of the chickens in The Fairest Fowl are more interesting breeds than ours: feathered feet! Chickens that look like boxers! Chickens that look like piles of silky wigs!

The chicken photos are definitely worth a look, and I really enjoyed the smart sense of humor evident throughout the book. Who knew a book solely about chickens could be pretty AND funny? I liked this one.