A cute story about a farmer who is outwitted by sneaky bunnies. ( )

Yep, that basically feels like my gardening experience.

Those wascally wabiits are going to get into that poor farmer's garden no matter what he does. Funny and charming. ( )

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! is an adorable and hilarious book to read to a child. It would be good for a read-aloud story time because of all of the sound-based action words. Children can guess what will come next, but they won't know the exact phrases, which makes it fun. The basic premise is that Mr. McGreenly decides to build a vegetable garden, but as soon as the sun goes down, three bunnies go into the garden to eat the vegetables. Mr. McGreenly sees this, gets angry, and builds bigger and supposedly better defenses to keep the bunnies out.

Recommended age: 2-4 years

Writing style: Rhythmic, sound-based action words, like "muncha, muncha, muncha" fill this book. As the farmer's defenses become more and more elaborate, these words are repeated again and again. Despite this repetition, the word choices are hard. It would be good for introducing action words, like climb, jump, squeeze, and crawl, or directions, like over, under, across, behind, and outside.

Lexile score: AD560L
Decoding difficulty: 5/5
Vocabulary difficulty: 5/5
Sentences difficulty: 5/5
Patterns difficulty: 4/5

Illustration style: It seems like a mix of colored pencils and watercolor with very crude outlines. I don't love it. As a warning, you need to pay attention to the pictures in this book in order to understand the full story and children will likely need you to point out the bunnies at the end.

Reality-based: Growing a vegetable garden, fences, and keeping animals out are realistic, but the extreme lengths the book goes to are not. ( )

Genre
Picture books for children
Tone
Amusing
Illustration
Cartoony
Subject
Determination
Fences
Food habits
Gardening
Hunger
Locks and keys
Persistence
Rabbits
V (The letter)
Vegetable gardening
Vegetables
Walls