COUNTING ON CHICKS BOOK IS ABOUT CHILDREN WHO GIVE CHICKENS TO OTHER CHILDREN THROUGHOUT THE WORLD SO THEY CAN HELP FEED THEIR FAMILIES
For two Fulton women, a recently released children’s book, “Counting on Chickens” was the proverbial rainbow after rain made real. Julie Phillips and Julie Kaplan, co-authors of the book and longtime neighbors, started last year not with a bang, but with a sigh. In the previous year, family members had been sick and a mutual friend was diagnosed with cancer and eventually died. “It was a pretty awful year,” Phillips remembers, “a lot of grief and drama going on.” Th
e women decided that they needed a “mind shift,” said Phillips, something to direct their attention away from their problems and onto people in need. “We can’t be focusing on all this bad stuff,” Phillips recalls thinking, “instead of focusing on ourselves, let’s help people who have bigger problems.” They made a pledge to Heifer International, a charity that provides impoverished families across the globe with livestock. They wanted to donate what Heifer calls an ark — an assortment of animal pairs that requires a $5,000 contribution. Just asking friends and family, they raised $3,500, Kaplan said. But it was on one of the neighbors’ weekly walks — they’ve been meeting on Saturdays for exercise for more than 10 years — that they decided to write a children’s book and donate the proceeds to Heifer. “The book is about children who give chickens to other children throughout the world so they can help feed their families,” Kaplan explains. “They use the chickens in different ways — one child uses the eggs, one child sells the eggs, one child has chickens help them weed their gardens.” Kaplan and Phillips wrote the story together, using their own children as inspiration, and Phillips created the illustrations. “Counting on Chickens” has been an instant hit, selling nearly 200 copies in just a few months. “People don’t have a problem paying $10 for a book when they know the proceeds are going to a good cause,” Kaplan said. “Counting on Chickens” is available for purchase on Amazon.com.
