Day 115: Big Red Barn

This was one of the first books my mom gave to my son after he was born.  The way I saw it, any book picked out by someone who had raised three kids over twenty years and read hundreds of children's stories along the way just had to be good.  It took a while for this story to become one of my son's favorites, but as he neared his first birthday, he fell in love with it!  Thank goodness it comes in board book form, as it wouldn't have lasted two days otherwise.  This is definitely my favorite of Margaret Wise Brown's books, and I only recently made the connection that illustrator Felicia Bond is the same artist for the "If You Give a Mouse" series. Big Red Barn is a perfect story for toddlers, telling the story of the animals' day on the farm in gentle, rolling verse with cute, charming illustrations.  "By the big red barn in the great green field, there was a pink pig who was learning to squeal.  There was a great big horse and a very little horse.  And on every barn is a weathervane, of course... a golden flying horse."  My son used to ask me to read it to him over and over in the car as he turned the pages, and he just loved all the sounds the animals made on the farm.  I think there must have been at least a two-month period in which he wanted to read this several times a day.  (My daughter is just now starting to love this book, as well.)  My two favorite pages show the animals playing together in the field, then later seeking the warm shelter of their barn to settle in and sleep for the night.  It's a wonderful bedtime story, and although I think the meter could be a little better at times, it is soothing and perfect for lulling little ones to sleep.