Grandma's Nursery Rhymes: Old MacDonald

The American classic is presented with some cuddly illustrations. The nursery song “Old MacDonald” is known to millions young and old, and this board book does it justice, or at least one stanza of it. Illustrator Brown brings to it the same warmth she used in her illustrations in Grandma Loves You (2013), presenting the titular farmer as a large, anthropomorphic rabbit. With her wide-brimmed hat and polka-dot farmer’s boots, Old MacDonald tends to her farm as the text describes the abundance of yellow chicks on the farm, one line per double-page spread. Accompanying “Here a chick, there a chick” are a dog and cat benignly watching the busy baby birds; accompanying “Everywhere a chick, chick” are two hogs in a wallow, a Jersey cow, and still more chicks. The chicks poke around the pumpkin patch and the barn, and they hitch rides on the other barnyard animals. The final pages of the book feature an identification activity, with pictures of all the farm animals and the noises they make. Motivated adults can then take their little readers through many more iterations of the song on their own. A warm introduction to an old favorite.