To start, I was immediately drawn to this book because of the illustrations on the front cover. It appears that the illustrator cut and sewed all of animals, people, and objects needed for the photos, and then photocopied them to become pages on the book. I thought that this was really neat because it is something I have not seen an illustrator do before. The illustrations also fill up the entire page, so that is very beautiful as well. While reading, I was more drawn to the story because of the pictures. The writing in this book would appear to look like a poem if it was all laid out on one page. The last word rhymes with the last word in the line that follows. For example, “There’s a cow in the cabbage patch, moo, moo, moo! She should be in the dairy, what shall we do?” The pattern continues throughout the book until the end when it is dinner time and the animals can finally go back to where they belong. I also like how at the end of the book, a two page spread of the farm is laid out with all of the buildings labeled, such as the barn labeled barn. This makes it easier for the reader to put in perspective where everything is on this farm, and how they all are in a close community together. The big idea of this story is to teach readers which building farm animals live in and the noises they make. I actually did not know that what lambs live in is called a meadow. ( )

All the animals in this mixed-up farmyard are out of place, but when dinnertime comes around, suddenly they are all back where they belong. ( )

This book is a good example of poetry because it is written using patterns of rhyme where the sentences are short and meaning is placed on the words. It conveys a message of confusion and how to bring all the animals back to where they belong in the end by providing dinner. Age appropriate: primary. Media: collage. ( )

clever rhyming text, beautiful felt illustrations. This book was a lot of fun for us and we read it many times.
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From Publishers Weekly
It's not just the cow that's gone astray in Blackstone's (Bear on a Bike; Bear in a Square) mixed-up barnyard. Not one of the animals is where it should be: "There's a pig in the henhouse, with piglets pink and new./ They should be in the pigsty, what shall we do?" But the couple who runs the farm have a solution: "Tell them all it's dinnertime, then it won't be long/ 'til all these naughty animals are back where they belong!" Stitchery wizard Beaton (Mother Goose Remembers) seems right at home from the opening pages. Shedding the tableaux feel of her earlier work, she displays an almost cinematic aesthetic here, composing and cropping her remarkable appliqu‚s of felt, buttons and beads to capture the comic havoc of the farmyard denizens. What's more, the meticulous beauty of her work finds the ideal showcase in the book's full-bleed, double-page spreads. Ages 6 mos.-4 yrs.