My Barn

From School Library Journal PreSchool-Grade 1-- Simple, repetitive prose introduces children to the inhabitants of a barn and the noises they make. The gentle activities of the farmer as he makes his rounds, sunup to sundown, provide a slender plot: he greets and tends to each animal, saying, for example, ``I like the sound/ . . ./ the sound a chicken makes.'' There is no hint of calamity or tension. Brown applies pastels and pen-and-ink for the full-color art that is beautifully executed in a pointillistic technique. Children will return to this book many times both because of its visual appeal, and because even the youngest of them will will soon be ``reading'' it themselves. --Lee Bock, Brown County Public Libraries, Green Bay, WICopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Kirkus Reviews From cock-crow to moonrise, a farmer moves around his barn, feeding and observing his animals. On each page, the simple, repetitive text (``I like the sound/gobble gobble.../the sound a turkey makes,'' with only the animal name and voice changing) captions a picture of the farmer with one kind of animal. Like Brown's illustrations for The Patchwork Farmer (1989), these are composed of multitudes of tiny black dots washed in soft color, with barn red and muted blues and greens predominating here. The result is pleasing but lacks animation; setting and atmosphere are emphasized more than the animals. Still, an offbeat introduction to animal voices, worth a try where funds permit. (Picture book. 2-6) --