By Sandra Boynton
It's a square dance in a barnyard, and it will have your two year old up off the rug and stomping before you're through the first page.
Boynton hands the whole barnyard a fiddle and calls a square dance. Bow to the horse. Bow to the cow. Twirl with the pig if you know how. The whole book is one rhyming dance call, with a die-cut cover and Boynton's round, pleased-with-themselves animals doing things cows do not actually do. There is no plot. There is no lesson. It's a dance, and your child is in it.
This is the coziest corner of the farm shelf. The animals are friends here and nobody in this book has ever thought about where bacon comes from, which at two and three is exactly right. It works because the rhythm does the teaching. It's written to be chanted, so your child catches the beat and starts filling in the last word of every line long before they can read one. And it's a board book, which is another way of saying it survives being loved hard.