cover image Farmyard Song

Farmyard Song

Carol Morley. Simon & Schuster, $14 (1pp) ISBN 978-0-671-89551-8

Morley (Dots and Spots; The Tapestry Cats) offers a stylized, elegant version of the cumulative rhyme also known as ``Cat Says Fiddle-i-fee.'' Farmyard animals are introduced one by one, along with their corresponding sounds: ``I had a hen and the hen pleased me/ I fed my hen by yonder tree;/ Hen goes chimmy-chuck, chimmy-chuck,/ Cat goes fiddle-i-fee.'' Cut-paper compositions are at once primitive and delicate, a juxtaposition that in itself creates an appealing whimsy. Morley's human characters (the narrator seems to change from verse to verse) are slim and elongated, and dressed in a variety of arrestingly patterned garments; her animals are placid, even decorous creatures of similarly high design. Visually entrancing-however, the deliberately refined approach mutes the rhyme's inherent boisterousness, a considerable price to pay. Ages 3-7. (Mar.)