Review Detail

It’s spring, and therefore it’s time to clean the animals on the farm but things go awry when Farmer gets to his pigs; they refuse to take a bath! Hilarious attempts by the farmer to wash the pigs fail miserably, and his best chance to wash his hogs turns into a muddy mess of fun for everyone. Farmer eventually learns that pigs just prefer to be muddy and that maybe a bit of mud is good for everyone, himself included.

When I read this to a group of preschoolers, they loved it when they were prompted to make oinks and pig snorts when the pigs were in full on rebellion. There were giggles of delight when the plane crashed into the pig pen, and everyone liked the ending where the Farmer ends up enjoying the mud with the pigs.

While I think that overall this is a really nice book, some of the rhymes didn’t totally work and were a little clunky to read along. If you’re going to perform this book, I would suggest reading through the book aloud by yourself a few times before you read it to a group. The illustrations are bright and colorful, and the facial expressions on the pigs and Farmer are awesome. The plot is very cute, and I love how the crop duster was incorporated. I had one little boy who was quite ecstatic about said crop duster and wanted to talk about planes for a long time after the story was done. It's a great book for a unit on farms or farm animals!