If you’ve ever lost a pet that means a lot to you, you’ll feel Blessen’s pain at the beginning of Margaret Simon’s book, named after the main character. She is sad when a hawk kills her chicken, but Blessen is responsible for her chicken’s death because her mother always told her to lock up the chicken cage. The hawks come every morning to hunt for food. It’s clear that she never meant for anything to happen to her pet, but she is old enough to know right from wrong.
