Tim Egan is the talented author and illustrator of many hysterical children’s picture books. Using animals for his characters, he creates darling facial expressions and clever storylines to make his point in a way that children can relate to.
In the first book I’d like to share, “Roasted Peanuts,” we meet Sam and Jackson, best friends, although very different. Sam is a horse, great at baseball, a fabulous athlete. Jackson is a cat, a little slow, methodical, with deadly aim. Jackson can pitch, but not quickly enough to play baseball the way the coach feels it ought to be played. When the day comes for these two friends to make a splash at the ball park, Sam is given a spot on the team, no problem, but all Jackson can manage to do is get a job selling peanuts. It’s not long, though, before Jackson makes his mark, throwing bags of peanuts with deadly accuracy to his customers and soon earns more of a reputation than any of the pitchers on the team. I felt that this book was a great example of the power of friendship, in that Sam didn’t want to be on the team if Jackson couldn’t be there too, and that he felt genuinely proud of his friend’s success.
The second book is “Serious Farm.” Farmer Fred just doesn’t smile very much. He takes his work very seriously and doesn’t see why he should joke and laugh when there’s so much work to be done. Out of loyalty to the farmer, the animals decide they should all be serious too, and so they are. Boring.
One day, the cow speaks up. (Isn’t it always the cows?) There has to be some laughter around the farm again. They can’t live their whole lives this way. The other animals agree, and they decide to embark on a campaign to make the farmer laugh.
Early the next morning, the cow climbs up on top of the fence where the rooster usually sat and tried to crow. It wasn’t very convincing, but it sure was funny. The animals laughed and laughed, but when the farmer came along, he wasn’t amused. (Or should that be, a-moo-sed?)
The pigs tried barking like dogs. Then the animals got dressed in the farmer’s clothes. They really were trying their little hearts out, but the farmer wouldn’t laugh.
At last they gave up and packed up their things, determined to leave the farm. When the farmer saw that they were missing, he felt sad and went out to look for them. He spotted them in the woods, and the sight of farm animals in the woods made him laugh. Okay, perhaps that’s not as funny as a cow on a fence, but we’ve got to take what we can get, right? The animals agreed to come home and the farmer tried to take things a little less seriously. He would even crack a smile from time to time, and that was enough for the animals.
Keep your eyes out for the other great animal picture books by Tim Egan at your local book store.
(“Roasted Peanuts” was published in 2006 by the Houghton Mifflin Company, and “Serious Farm” was published by the same house in 2003. Both were illustrated by the author.)
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