"Your Farm" | Reviewed by Chris Stuckenschneider

Some author/illustrators have a knack for captivating. Jon Klassen is the best of the best. He’s written or illustrated countless books that draw readers in over the years, picture books that are off the wall and laugh-out-loud funny. For grins check out his “Hat” trilogy, for young readers preschool to third grade. Older readers and adults will get a kick out of Klassen’s tongue-and-cheek-humor too.

Klassen is focusing some of his creative energy into writing board books for the younger set. He began with his “Shapes Trilogy” and recently published “Your Places Series.” Three were released on Valentine’s Day—what a joy to suggest “Your Forest,” “Your Farm” and “Your Island.” Here’s a teaser for “Your Farm.”

Flip the opening page and see a simple little sun: “This is your sun. It is coming up for you.” (how special is that going to make a child feel?) The sun has big dark eyes that peer at a tree with giant eyes on the next page. Once again, the tree is “your tree. It can go under the sun.”

The tree and the sun go next to a barn, “your barn,” bright red with matching black peepers. What’s a barn without animals—how about a horse to go in the barn with “some hay for him to eat.” Naturally, a farm needs a vehicle to haul stuff. Klassen adds a blue pickup truck. “It is a good truck. It can go in the barn too.”

Have a tree? You'd better have a stool to sit on and enjoy the shade. Klassen’s is three-legged with one eye, a quirky detail kids are sure to pick up on because they read pictures. Finally, a farm needs a fence, and with that the farm is “…now done.”

If you’ve ever played farm as a kid, you remember having models of animals and objects and moving them around. Klassen has captured this type of play in “Your Farm.” But he’s made his book a nighty-night pick too. Once the fence is in place, his artist’s palette changes, the sun goes down, the eyes all go half-closed, and dark descends.

Here’s another charmer to add to Klassen’s repertoire.

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