Veggie lovers: grab your trowels, spades, and watering cans. Warm weather’s here and it’s time to make delicious things grow.

In Miss MacDonald Has a Farm by Kalee Gwarjanski and Elizabet Vuković (Doubleday BFYR, 2024), we’re all invited to tag along with busy Miss MacDonald as she cultivates, harvests, and then cooks colorful crops of healthy, flavorful produce. With a pick-pick here, and a shuck-shuck there, she takes us from seed to table with hard work, patience, and careful tending.

Debut author Gwarjanski’s upbeat female-centric spin on the traditional “Old MacDonald” song, with its rhythmic, rollicking text, is equally fun to sing or read aloud. Since the verse scans so well, those familiar with the song will likely find it hard to resist vocalizing, especially with the jaunty tagline “E-I-E-I-GROW.”

So what is Miss MacDonald actually growing? Lettuce, peas, tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, potatoes, corn and pumpkins. She begins by planting lettuce:

Miss MacDonald has a farm.
She loves things that grow.

And on that farm,
she has some lettuce.

E-I-E-I-GROW

With a seed-seed here
and a sow-throw there,

here it shoots, there it sprouts,
everywhere it sprout-sprouts.

Miss MacDonald has a farm.
She loves things that grow.

(I can hear you singing!) 🙂

She then goes on to complete a different task for each of the other vegetables: waters her peas, weeds her tomato plants, picks her green beans, prunes her zucchini, hills her potatoes, shucks her corn, and finally washes and cans her pumpkins.

Gwarjanski’s clever use of poetic devices such as repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and hyphenated words injects fun and energy in every line. The abundance of active verbs makes for a steady pace, while the rich vocabulary provides some very toothsome mouthfuls: snip-snap, twirl-twirls, drip-drop, pluck-pull, thrish-thresh, zooms, blooms, dig-dug. One cannot resist bursting into full-throated song when encountering, “With a wash-wash here/and a scrub-a-dub there,/here it’s stored,/there it’s canned,/everywhere it’s can-canned.” Fantastic!

Vuković’s friendly, cartoony illustrations convey a lot of information in each spread, showing how and where various plants grow and what tools are used as Miss MacDonald demonstrates each activity. From pea vines climbing trellises, to tomatoes ripening on their stakes, to potatoes rooting underground, kids will be able to place these familiar vegetables in their agricultural settings and better appreciate them when they appear on their own tables.

They’ll also admire Miss MacDonald’s dedication, industry and enthusiasm, perhaps being able to imagine her pride and satisfaction at reaping the rewards of her labor. Best of all, they’ll enjoy the final outcome of this story: Miss MacDonald cooking a meal to share with her friends. I love the final double page spread showing a diverse group of guests feasting on dishes made with all the vegetables from the farm.

An open-hearted celebration of healthy eating, plant-based meals, small (and female) farmers, and locally sourced produce, Miss MacDonald Has a Farm may inspire kids to plant their own home gardens and (praise be!) eat their veggies. 🙂

Back matter includes a Seed to Table glossary describing Miss MacDonald’s various tasks, as well as a Harvest Vegetable Bake recipe. Yum!

Enjoy the book trailer:

*

MISS MACDONALD HAS A FARM
written by Kalee Gwarjanski
illustrated by Elizabet Vuković
published by Doubleday BFYR, March 2024
Picture Book for ages 4-8, 32 pp.
*Includes Glossary and Recipe

*

Lovely and talented Patricia Franz has the Roundup at Reverie. Be sure to check out all the poetic goodness being served up around the blogosphere this week. Have a delicious weekend!

---

*Interior spreads text copyright © 2024 Kalee Gwarjanski, illustrations © 2024 Elizabet Vuković, published by Doubleday BFYR. All rights reserved.

**Copyright © 2024 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.