To Market, To Market

This story is very silly, expressive, and entertaining. An elderly lady keeps returning to the market to buy more farm animals. The animals escape their designated areas and destroy the inside of the house. Everything gets hectic. This time, the animals come with her to the market and she buys vegetables. She made everyone vegetable soup, which is when everyone is calm and behaved.

This picture book displays the action of the scene clearly in different ways. It accomplishes this through the vivid illustrations and font styles. The illustrations use mixed media where colors are created with paint and black and white is displayed through photography. The illustrations express what's going on very clearly. For example, the lady's glasses show more become more crooked as time goes on and the amount of mess in the kitchen continuously grows throughout the story.

The book also uses certain traits with its textual features. For example, animal names are written in red, capitalized, and larger than the rest of the text. There is also good use of appropriate punctuation to give emotion to the story. For example, "Everything's running all over the place!" expresses the chaotic atmosphere and the desperation felt by the lady.

The big message of this story is that there is always a way to handle chaotic situations. Although the lady became very flustered and impatient with the animals, she found a solution. show less

I found this to be a very cute story. I really enjoyed how the author took a very common nursery rhyme and built a story around it. I feel that children would really enjoy this book because they may very likely recognize the nursery rhyme and therefore become excited about and invested in the story. The illustrations and the layout of the text reflected the whimsicality of the story and brought the nursery rhyme to life. I believe that children would find the story entertaining and silly and that it would be a fun read for younger children.

An elderly woman makes trips to the market to buy animals (presumably to eat) but upon returning each time finds that the animals have run amok in her absence. This rhyming, cumulative folktale would be a joy to read aloud and is only enhanced by Janet Stevens' creative integration of original artwork and photography.

Great book, funny, rhymes, great animal pictures, lots going on. Children will want to reread this book often. The illustrations are great and the last page will keep them laughing every time.

This fun and energetic book follows a woman on her trio to the market as she buys different items, starting with a pig. After several trips to the market in search of different animals, she realizes her hands are full and things are a mess. She heads back to the market one last time in search of necessities to make hot soup. This book is brightly illustrated and full of fun rhymes and comedy.

Extension Ideas:
You can read this book and then have children write about their craziest trip to the market.

This book was rally funny. It was about a woman going to the market to get an animal but she had to keep going back to the market and every time she came home the previous animal got loose and was running around. The pictures were very funny too.

A humorous, rhyming tale of an old lady who goes to market to buy a fat pig. She soon has many animals from market who cause quite a stir in her household. Will she have a major feast or a major mess or both?