Miss MacDonald Has a Farm

February 1, 2024
Move over, Old MacDonald: The hardworking Miss MacDonald has a green thumb and plenty of plants. This tale follows the same cadence as the familiar song but replaces the opening lines with "Miss MacDonald has a farm. / She loves things that grow." Instead of caring for pastures full of animals, Miss MacDonald grows food, "with a water-water here" and a "drip-drop there." Once her bounty is ready, the titular farmer harvests her crops and cooks up a feast for her friends. Caregivers and educators will find the bouncy text fun to sing, but it's also readable if that's preferred. Gwarjanski employs rich vocabulary words such as shuck, tubers, and thresh, many of which are defined in an appended glossary. Miss MacDonald has brown skin and wears oversized, orange-tinted sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, tall socks, and gardening clogs. On every page she tirelessly tends to her plants, while the accompanying illustrations feature vibrant, true-to-life depictions of seedlings, vines, and stalks. This is a delightful update that centers a woman and encourages readers to consider how the foods they love appear on the table. Those who want to follow Miss MacDonald's worthy example should check out the recipe for a harvest vegetable bake in the backmatter. This beloved nursery rhyme gets a fresh and meaningful modernization. (Picture book. 4-6)

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March 1, 2024

PreS-Gr 2-This is a jaunty tribute, modeled on the original song about Old MacDonald, to the hard work and satisfaction of growing food. However, this MacDonald is young, female, and a farmer of color. "With a seed-seed here/ and a sow-throw there, / here it shoots, / there it sprouts, / everywhere it sprout-sprouts," Miss MacDonald loves what she does as she plants, waters, weeds, picks, prunes, shucks, and washes her produce and then cooks it all up into a feast for her friends. The text scans well with language that will be fun to read out loud or sing. It will, however, be too complex for a sing-along. This book is not a detailed primer on how food grows, so much as an appreciation of the great variety of edible plant life and the care it requires. Cheerfully colored cartoon-style illustrations have elements of block printing and pack in a lot of action without overwhelming viewers. VERDICT A playful introduction for plant and seed units, this has classroom uses as well as story hour possibilities, especially when paired with the classic song.-Jan Aldrich Solow

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