Barnyard Lullaby
- Book Review,
by Frank Asch
From School Library Journal
PreS?A farmer and his wife are tucked in bed when the various farm creatures begin singing their babies to sleep. The chicks, calf, colt, piglets, lamb, and goslings all appreciate their mothers' soothing lullabies, but the farmer hears only an irritating chorus of animal noises. The tables are turned, however, when the annoyed man wakes his wife and their baby and the human mother sings a song that is only noise to the animals but beautiful to the infant and his father. This entertaining premise is carried out in a sweet narrative that includes the poetic lullabies sung to each baby. Every song has the same gentle second stanza for a unifying theme of peace and love. Full- and half-page clever, blocky cartoons done with minimal but expressive lines and in rich, muted, nighttime colors are well balanced and artfully arranged in a pleasingly varied format that includes several different typefaces. The basic lullaby with musical notation is appended.?Patricia Pearl Dole, formerly at First Presbyterian School, Martinsville, VACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ages 4^-7. Out in the barnyard, a mother hen sings a lullaby to her chicks. Unfortunately, the poor farmer, who is trying to get some sleep, thinks the lullaby sounds like "so much cluck, cluck, clucking." But the chicks understand the lovely song and so does the cow, who gets the idea to sing to her calf: "Come lie beside me / under stars so bright. / Let dreams of shady pastures / Bring on the night." To the farmer, her song just sounds like mooing, but the music makes the horse decide to sing to her foal, and so on--until all of the animals are singing lullabies at once. Frustrated by the cacophony, the farmer hollers out the window, "BE QUIET," which wakes his own baby. It then falls to the farmer's wife to sing her baby (and her husband) to sleep. The animals in the barnyard thought it was "just so much noise." To the farmer, it was a "beautiful lullaby." Music, contributed by Melissa Chesnut, follows the story, but the words work just as well recited as poetry. Asch's bold, clear illustrations couple nicely with the soothing simplicity of the text to make this a perfect bedtime book that is sure to become a classic. Helen Rosenberg
From Kirkus Reviews
The clucking, mooing, neighing, oinking, baaing, and honking of the barnyard animals are just so much noise to the farmer in his bed, but these are melodic lullabies to the animals in the barn. ``Tuck your legs beneath you,/Legs that love to run./Feel them growing ever stronger./Let the day be done,'' a horse sings to her foal. The farmer, desperate to sleep, goes to the window to holler, ``BE QUIET!'' and wakes up his baby, who wails in a chorus all his own. The farmer's wife cradles the baby in her arms, rocking and singing as the other farmyard mothers have done, and soon, all are asleep. In a book that answers the preschooler's wish to point at animals and ``sing'' along, Asch (Water, 1995, etc.) illustrates each lullaby with the simplicity of his Moonbear books; the musical score at the end sets the animal poems to music. (Picture book. 1-3) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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