PICTURE BOOK - The Farmer and the Clown - Marla Frazee

Illustrated by the author

2014 Beach Lane Books

HC $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.32

My rating: 4

Endpapers:  red

Title Page: browns and yellow: sunrise: farmer heading for the fields, walking away from his small house

Wordless picture book

My comments:  A farmer (who lives alone way out in the country) rescues a baby clown who falls off a circus train. Through days and nights they bond and become very attached to one another - until the train returns and the farmer gets to reunite baby clown to his family. 
Happy? Yes. Sad? Yes! Perhaps my current loneliness makes me feel extra, ultra sorry for the poor farmer, but I'm left with such a sad feeling after reading this story!

Goodreads:  Whimsical and touching images tell the story of an unexpected friendship and the revelations it inspires in this moving, wordless picture book from two-time Caldecott Honor medalist Marla Frazee.
          A baby clown is separated from his family when he accidentally bounces off their circus train and lands in a lonely farmer’s vast, empty field. The farmer reluctantly rescues the little clown, and over the course of one day together, the two of them make some surprising discoveries about themselves—and about life!
          Sweet, funny, and moving, this wordless picture book from a master of the form and the creator of The Boss Baby speaks volumes and will delight story lovers of all ages. 

Ling Cho and His Three Friends - V. J. Pacilio

Illustrated by Scott Cook
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000
Looks like it's out-of-print
Library: picture book section
32 pages
Rating: 3.5
Endpapers: 4

This is a longish story told in couplets. The couplets are wonderfully rhythmic, use great words (fertile, entrusted, summon, reap, grueling, resolution, poverty, annual, depart, meager, transport, envision, destined, ...) and is full of alliteration. It's a tale of friendship and honesty. The illustrations are great at close examination, but would look blurry and washed out if read aloud and a listener was even a short distance away.

This would make a great reader's theater or choral reading for an older class.

Note: I took it from the library to read because i thought it might apply to my unit on China. And although the illustrations are about Chinese people, it could apply to any group of farmers that celebrate the harvest.

"In the wondrous land of China, many years ago,
There lived a wise and kindly man, a farmer names Ling Cho.
Together with his wife and sons, in fertile fields he'd toil;
Their lives entrusted to the land, true servants of the soil."