Who can sleep on such a beautiful night? Not Mama Horse. Not Mama Pig. Not Mama Sheep. They want to dance! Bounce! Jig! Leap! Shhh! The little ones are sound asleep . . . or are they?
Pat Hutchins is an English illustrator and writer of children's books.
She won the 1974 Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. The work was The Wind Blew, a picture book in rhyme which she also wrote. It shows how "a crowd of people anxiously chase their belongings" in the wind.
My child LOVES to read so we frequent the library and just close our eyes and pick books off the shelf to read. This is how we stumbled across this book and many of his other favorites. This book Barn Dance! is a cute children's book centered in a barn, telling a story of a mother pig, sheep, and horse that want to dance the night away but their little ones are sleeping. I made a broad text-t0-text connection here with the personification of animals, which is seen often in children's books, and how children can learn from the behavior modeled by animals. This was a fun book to read with vivid and detailed artwork with rhyming words throughout and it makes for a great bedtime story!
This title does have a fairly good rhyming text, but I did not enjoy the storyline or the illustrations which are very different from the early Pat Hutchins titles two of which I adore to this day, Rosie’s Walk and Owl tried to Sleep. The only illustration reflective of her early illustrations is the tree with the owl on the front cover and repeated in one illustration. I did like the use of the word jig and jigged for some of the actions in the text. Overall disappointing.
Pig, Horse, and sheep want to dance but the little ones are sleeping. They each take a turn to quietly dance and then to rest by their babies. Then all the baby animals have their own time to dance when the mother animals are sleeping.
This a fun, rhythmic book about barn animals who like to dance. First it was horse, then sheep, then pig who showed off their moves. I like this book's liveliness and creative rhyming.
A silly story about dancing farm animals with lots of rhythm and repetition--a good story time pick! (This one would work well with a flannel board activity.)
Barn Dance! / written and illustrated by Pat Hutchins -- New York : Greenwillow Books, c2007. (32 pages)
SUMMARY: Who can sleep on such a beautiful night? Not Mama Horse. Not Mama Pig. Not Mama Sheep. They want to dance! Bounce! Jig! and Leap! -- Shhh! The little ones are sound asleep...or are they just waiting for their turn? (bookjacket)
REVIEW: The different animals have different ways of dancing that are unique to them which comes through in the text and illustrations. However, overall, I didn't like this book. I much prefer the title BARN DANCE by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault.
Author/illustrator has many titles that I enjoy including THE DOORBELL RANG and ROSIE'S WALK.
This is a very fun books about some mother animals late one night wanting to dance but their babies were asleep. This is an excellent introduction to some music and movement activities. The verses where well written and rhymed beautifully. The art was also very eye-catching.
LEARNING EXPERIENCE: The class has its own barn dance during music and movement. Each child gets an opportunity to dance how they want before giving a turn to the next student. It helps if the teachers participate.
The illustrations were very colorful and descriptive. It is a rhyming book with great adjectives that describes many items. This book is a great way to teach children how to use adjectives. A learning experience would be to break down the book and pick out adjectives and place them in different sentences.
Brightly colored, humor filled illustrations and rhyming text engage readers. The full moon draws all the farm animals out to dance - "bounce, jug and to leap" - one night while their little ones were fast asleep. They have fun, but not exactly the kind of fun they expected, and they end up asleep…while their little ones enjoy a little fun of their own.
Another farm yard book, with the same characters as in Don't Get Lost!, but the illustrations style is different. The rhymed text is not great, but okay.
I love this book with the dancing pig, horse, and sheep mamas. The dancing causes all sorts of trouble but the mamas keep dancing until they are exhausted. I'm not sure this would be a storytime crowd-pleaser but it would be great one-on-one read aloud.
Accidentally checked this book out when I wanted the Bill Martin Jr. version, whoops. This book would pair nicely with David Ezra Stein's Interrupting Chicken, methinks...