I liked this book for a couple of reasons. I liked how the illustrations seemed to be painted with a colorful and opaque paint. I like how the book alternates between elaborate and detailed full pages of illustrations to small and simply illustrations for other poems. For example, the "Recite your chickens" poem contains all of the different types of chickens that take up two pages of the book and in "Barnyard talk" the page displays a rather small illustration of a young girl. I also liked the structure of the writing and how the author creatively used the text to follow the story. For example, in the poem "My dog" the author explains all of the resources they receive from the different types of barn animals. In her last sentence she states that, "but my dog gives me kisses and tail wags . . . and fleas," the ellipsis is meant to make the reader pause but the spacing that the author uses, make the ellipsis appear as fleas. The main idea of this book was to entertain the readers on silly barnyard animal poems. ( )

Poetry - This book is a collection of sixteen bedtime poems. The poems are centered on barnyard animals and their activities. The illustrations are bright and as wacky as the poems.

I am not a big poetry fan, but this book made me laugh out loud. I liked the mix of long and short poems. I also enjoyed how the personalities of the animals came through in both the writings and the pictures.

For a classroom extension I would have the students select their favorite farm animals and make a poem of their own about the animal. We could also use zoo animals to make poems. We could take the poems and make our own book complete with illustrations. ( )