A CROWDED FARMHOUSE FOLKTALE

A wise woman offers advice to a farmer whose home is too noisy and too crowded.

A little house with a human or animal face in every window sits solidly in the meadow as a cock welcomes the morning. It is an “itty-bitty house” in every detail. Farmer Earl strides out the doorway of his too-crowded and too-noisy house, leaving behind his wife and several children to ask a neighbor for help. The answer, to bring his ducks into the house, confuses him, but he follows her advice. The ducks do as ducks do—“flapp[ing]” and “snack[ing]” and “waddl[ing]” and “quack[ing]”—so the farmer returns to the wise woman. Housing the horses and goats are her next words of wisdom, resulting in even more mayhem. Finally, the outdoor animals are returned to the outdoors, and Farmer Earl at last finds peace “AND extra space!” The author credits the Yiddish folktale “It Could Always Be Worse” as her source, but the flavor of the original is gone. With plenty of active and noisy verbs, the repetitive text does offer possibilities for a lively read-aloud session. The humans all present as White with an Americana folk-art sameness to their facial features while the animal antics are mildly amusing. The effect is to create very busy indoor settings that appear more as a freeze-frame than an animated event, taking some energy away from the text.

A Yiddish folktale retold without the oy vey.