About the Book

Book: New Chicks at The Peaceable

Author: Caryl “Grami” McAdoo

Genre: Children’s Animals Picture Book

Release Date: November 23, 2023

Chickens from newborns to old hens have a “pecking order” but bullying is never right! What to do if you’re bullied by those around you!

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

Award-winning, Christian author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory. Of her best-selling novels, readers love her historical Christian romance family sagas most, but also enjoy their contemporary cousins, Caryl’s Biblical fiction, her new historical mystery series, and tales for young adults and mid-grade booklovers as well as the new picture books for the still younger set. The majority of reviewers award her stories five-stars and praise Caryl’s writing style and the depth of her characters, feeling as though they get to know them well.

The prolific writer loves singing the new songs God gives her almost as much as penning new novels—hear a few at YouTube! She’s been married to Ron fifty-five years, and they share four children and twenty-seven grandsugars. The McAdoos live at The Peaceable in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door.

More from Caryl

As the chicken population grows at The Peaceable Farm & Bookery, troubles come–all based all on the true story! One of our beautiful ‘Golden Laced Wyandotte’ hens got broody and wanted to sit on a nest and hatch a clutch of chicks!

The wee peepers, designated the “Songsters” and named Reba, Celine, Loretta, and Miley (the last by a reader’s daughter), experience the famous and proverbial “pecking order” chickens are so famous for. In human terms that can be called bullying though, and so Goldie, their mother teaches the girls how to respond those bully chickens!

Grami loves her “backyard birds”, and so does O’Pa! She expects the name of the twenty acres she and O’Pa live on in Red River County—The Peaceable—to be the spur for all its inhabitants to cohabitate peacefully with one another—and that includes the chickens!

She and O’Pa, her husband of fifty-five years have bought an incubator to hatch purebred chicks then raise fine, healthy birds to their laying age—usually four to five months—before finding them forever homes. We love our flock, and the babies grow so fast. Watching them is so much fun and relaxing, too!

Grami knows each hen and rooster by name, and they all are so affectionate! They come running whenever I head out the door (mostly because they want to see if I brought any food! ) I love thinking about what they are saying to each other with all their clucking and purring and cackling!

This is why the books are partially written from the hens’ point of view as our first animals’ series, The River Bottom Ranch Stories featuring horses and goats and dogs among other wild animal characters. And all those farm animals were real ones that we owned and loved, too—like the chickens!

This series ‘Grami’s Stories for Children’ also has a narrator speaking throughout—that’s me, Grami McAdoo! I talk to the children through a few pages full of dialogue to teach them about poultry and things of God. In NEW CHICKS at the Peaceable, I talk about bullies and how Jesus teaches us to respond, how they can be scary, but God is always with us and sends His angels to protect us!

The illustrations are photographs of our real chickens and The Peaceable Farm & Bookery. In the back of the book, there are a few pages of “Chicken Terminology” and fun “Chicken Facts” to teach the little ones more about the wonderful world of chickens!

I pray the precious little ones so dear to God’s heart will love the story and be blessed by it!

Author Interview

Do you hear from your readers much?

What kinds of things do they say? Of course, I “hear from readers” every time one gives my books a review, but I also get personal notes through my website, email, and Messenger.

Their notes are always encouraging and supportive—maybe I ought to say mostly because every now and then someone writes something negative, usually based on their personal beliefs and religious convictions being different from mine.

One I received recently said this: “It is moving and such an emotional illustration of how God loves us unconditionally. I say this in every review I write about a book by this author . “I always grow stronger in my faith and gain a deeper relationship with God after reading a book from this author.”

The writing style is authentic, realistic and paints a picture of grace, love and faith. I enjoyed this story simply because it is one where I feel God in the story as I become familiar with the characters. Alex is a good example of a woman who desires to help others, find her place in life and be a Godly example to others. “

Such are very humbling before God and bring tears of great joy. I love it every time I hear from a reader, whatever it is they have to say!

How do you overcome writer’s block? Do you have any advice for others in finding their process to overcome it?

As a rule, I don’t experience any writer’s block, but on that rare occasion I do, I go back a bit. It’s usually that I have taken the characters a way they didn’t want to go.

On this book NEW CHICKS, my first idea was for it to be about bullying, but I had been stopped and just couldn’t finish it . . . Finally, I went back and changed the premise to not being afraid. THAT was what it was supposed to be about and then I breezed through to the end!/ So that’s my advice, go back and see where you went wrong.

How did you come up with the title for your book?

This was easy! I was writing about new chicks at the Peaceable! Voila! My title! 😊

What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing?

I’d say this would have to had to do with learning point of view. For me, this was the hardest “tool” of creative writing to master. It seemed so elusive, and I wouldn’t know when, where, or how I had gotten out of POV when I received that critique at the DFW Writers Workshop.To imagine that I was sitting on my POV Character’s shoulder and seeing everything he or she was seeing, hearing what he was hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling (with skin, the sense of touch—not any emotion) then report that on your page!

I finally got it and now it comes quite naturally. Using a strong point of view is what makes readers feel like they are IN the story as a part of it, being right there with the character. It makes the characters real instead of being cardboard.

Is your writing space pristine or organized chaos?

I’d have to say neither . . . it’s more Unorganized chaos. When I have some spare time, I try to get it organized, but having “spare time” is rare for me with looooong intervals between, and the papers pile up.

I’m bad about writing something I want/need to remember on whatever is handy. I know I should keep a spiral tablet for that . . . but I just don’t. I don’t like pages and pages to have to go through. And I don’t like to tear pages out of a spiral notebook—all those little pieces . . . I don’t know. Maybe I should try it again.

I try to keep most of the mess behind me though so it doesn’t affect my mood. 😊