Title: Old MacDonald Heard a Parp
Author and illustrator: Olaf Falafel
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books

Teacher and pupil review

When this book landed on our doormat at school, it was met with some hesitant reactions from teaching colleagues. Some could immediately see the potential for humour, while others were less convinced.

Olaf Falafel is a surrealist comedian and illustrator, who has also enjoyed fame with his short online videos. In his version of Old MacDonald Had a Farm, Old Macdonald spends his time tracking down the culprit of a lot of parping, coming from all over the farm.

The parps all sound very different, but the story comes with a handy guide on how to make the sounds. There’s a parp from a goat, from a duck, from a horse, from a unicorn (but that was just in his dream), from a pig and, in the end, one from an additional character that the children were surprised to see. The Quails class won’t spoil the end for you, but it’s worth the wait.

Too rude for teachers

When we told the story at school, it ended up in a hilarious storytime, with everyone (including some of those hesitant colleagues) joining in. The children loved the fact that they thought this book was too rude for some teachers. We hid the book behind others on the bookshelf to avoid any other teachers becoming embarrassed by it. This led to lots of talk between the children about the story and characters.

Oscar, 4, said: “It’s too rude for Mrs Foster to read, so we have to hide it away.” And five-year-old Maddie said she loved making all the rude sounds for all the different animals.

The illustrations are engaging and colourful, and after a number of storytimes the children still found new things to spot on each page. Having read the story a number of times, Zach, 4, suggested that “we could actually sing this one, too”. We did this, and so the story became part of our rhyme times as well as story time.

Half-approval

Having had the book in the classroom for a number of weeks now, it hasn’t had the lasting impact that other stories have had. Some children have chosen to take it from the library and a small number have asked for it again, but not in the numbers that we have had for other books we reviewed for Tes.

When we asked the children, after a few weeks, about the book, just over half said they would give it the full thumbs-up. Others said they liked it, but would choose another book to read. Staff certainly agreed that it would be a good story to start a project about farm animals, or one to add to a rhyme basket of songs to sing.

Matt Perrett is early-years foundation stage class teacher and head of learning at Netley Marsh CofE Infant School in Southampton

If you or your class would like to write a review for Tes, please contact Adi Bloom at adi.bloom@tesglobal.com

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