On With The Show! The Farm That Mac Built by Tammi Sauer

There's no business like show business!

And when a cast of the usual farm animals decide to put on a barn show, Scarecrow the empressario puts together a troup of Vaudeville wannabes all ready to wow their audience.

A couple of hens with flashlights flap up to the rafters to provide the stage lighting, the curtains open, and the pigs sashay out with their top hats and canes and begin to do the old soft shoe. But the tap of their trotters is followed by waltzing cows in ballroom gowns...

THAT LIVE ON THE FARM THAT JACK BUILT!

and NOW...

... MONKEYS!?

Oh, dear! These don't belong on the farm!

Emcee Scarecrow shoos the monkeys offstage in time for the next scheduled act--Sheep That Leap--but their dance is interrupted by break-dancing...

KANGAROOS?

And scarcely has the next scheduled act, the horse (NEIGH!) begun his one-man-band gig with a concertina jig when a pair of Viking elephants give the rest a scare. The cast scatters to hide behind the scenery until...

... a troup of hatching eggs jiggle out and with a chorus of cracks, out comes a brood of baby...

PENGUINS?

But the show must go on! That's show biz at Old Mac's Farm, in Tammi Sauer's latest, The Farm That Mac Built, a comical mashup of two nursery songs, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" and "This Is the House that Jack Built" that combines zoo animals and farm animals in one of the whackiest casts that ever trod the boards together. With funny illustrations by author-illustrator Jackie Urbanavic (creator of the hilarious Duck at the Door (Max the Duck) series) (see my reviews here) this is one fractured folksong production that breaks the mold! Says School Library Journal, "Lots of word repetition and animal sound effects, combined with Urbanovic’s comically expressive cartoon illustrations, make this a rollicking read-aloud."