1. Farmyard Beat by Lindsey Craig

Bibliographic Citation:

Craig, Lindsey. Farmyard Beat. Illustrated by Marc Brown. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 32p. ISBN 978-0375864551

Awards/Selection Lists:

Oppenheim Best Book Gold Award, 2011

Wilde Award, Picture Books, 2011

Granite Media: Best Preschool Books, 2012

Books 4 Learning: Favorite Bedtime Stories, 2011

Format Examined:

Hardcover

Annotation:

The chicks wake up the sheep with their rhythmic peeping, which causes a chain reaction where all the animals wake up and join in, until they wake up Farmer Sue.

Personal Reaction:

Farmyard Beat begins with chicks who just cannot get to sleep because "they got that beat". All their rhythmic peeping wakes up sheep. The story continues with each animal joining in the fun while waking up the next animals that rhyme with the sound that they are making. The rhythm and rhyme of the text invites the listener to become involved in telling the story through movement and guessing the animals that are coming next in the story. Farmer Sue enters the scene when the animals awaken her with their Farmyard Beat. Listeners are led to wonder if Farmer Sue will be upset with the animals, but the surprise is that she joins in the fun, until all of the animals become tired and "fall in a heap asleep" along with Farmer Sue in her bed.

Age Recommendation:

I would recommend this book for ages 3 to  5 years.

Themes/Issues:

Animals, Rhythm

Early Literacy Skills Addressed

Letter Knowledge: Letter knowledge is not directly addressed in the text.

Narrative Skills: The rhythm and rhyme of the story makes the story easy for young children to recite and retell on their own.

Phonological Awareness: The sounds that the animals make are written out as they would sound, which supports phonological awareness.


Print Awareness: The text is fairly large on each page, and the animal sounds are in large type. White print against the textured paper pictures makes the words easy to for children to see.

Print Motivation: The animal sounds draw the children in with large text to represent the sounds that each animal makes. The rhythm and rhyme is fun, and makes reading the book enjoyable.

Vocabulary: Vocabulary is encouraged through the different animal sounds.

Author/ Illustrator Website:

No official author website