Moo, Baa, La La La!

My son received Moo, Baa, La La La! as a Hannukah gift two years ago. It is a cute non-sense book that takes the typical animal themed board book and turns it on end. It starts out in a straight forward manner with cows saying moo and sheep saying baa, but then the pigs aren't saying oink. Instead, they are singing "La la la!"

After the initial gag that explains the title, the book wanders on to more exotic animals and what they might say. These last few pages lack the rhytmn and humor of the first half, which is a shame for such a short book.

When a person writes books that all feature animals as main characters, it's inevitable that one of those books will be about animal sounds. Fortunately, Boynton is in fine form in this offering, with a simple text that still manages to incorporate silly humor and fun reader involvement. The text is simpler than most of her other stories, which makes it a good choice for younger readers, but it still rolls readily off the tongue. I love hearing my daughter imitate the three dancing pigs that say la la la - I wish I could catch the sound her voice in my writing, it's adorable. This is a great book for labeling animals and identifying sounds. Even though it doesn't offer a wide selection of beasties, they are accompanied by cute show more illustrations and a fun text that child and parent will enjoy. show less

I love Sandra Boynton's books. They illustrations are always humurous, and some of them have really great little rhymes. Good picture books for little tots.

What a cute book! This would be a wonderful book to share with a toddler because of its simplicity, its humor ("three singing pigs say La La La!"), and its adorable illustrations. Young children love to learn and imitate animal sounds so this would be a fun book for any parent or other child caregiver to read to and discuss with a favorite young child.

Sandra Boynton tackles animal sounds with her signature offbeat humor and cute illustrations.

This book started out great for a younger child. My 20 month old toddler thought that the simple sentences and sounds were great and was mimicking the sounds quickly. However, I felt like halfway through the book, there was a serious shift to an older audience, and my son lost total interest in the book at that point. If the intended audience had remained the same throughout the book, I think it would have been an awesome book. As it stands, however, I think the shift was too much, and it weakened the book.

Reaction: Moo, baa, la la la! has become one of my favorite books to read to my young children. Babies love to imitate the sounds of animals. Boynton’s happy, cartoon-like animal illustrations coupled with silly, age appropriate humor make reading this book such a pleasure-over and over again.