The Thing That Bothered Farmer Brown
written by Teri Sloat, illustrated by Nadine Bernard Wescott
Orchard Books, 1995

Available in paperback from Orchard and Scholastic!

Reviews

Booklist:…Read the rhyming text aloud and children will soon be chiming in on the refrain. Good fun.

School Library Journal: Farmer Brown's battle with a mosquito is told in toe-tapping verse in this delightful story.

About the Book

All of the Farmer Brown books are based on the man I'm married to, whose name is Bob. The thing that bothered Bob started at our cabin when he woke us up trying to kill a mosquito so it wouldn't bother “us”. I tried to write a funny story about what happened, but it was funnier when I stepped away from reality and had him waking animals, which put him on a farm, which made him a farmer. When I named him Farmer Brown, it set up a lot of rhyming words. He is really much better looking than the man in the book.

It is Nadine's illustrations that make the farmer such a delightful character! She has such a great way of drawing animals, that when this book came out, we wanted to make more Farmer Brown books.

Teacher Activities

• Create "Wanted" posters for The Thing That Bothered Farmer Brown. On the poster, be sure to tell why whichever humming thing you have chosen is guilty. (Students presented this book to the Florida State Reading Committee in this manner.)
• Write a short poem about something that keeps you awake at night or something you do to go to sleep that keeps others awake.
• Perform a Reader's Theater, finding sound effects to represent the sounds in the story.
• Make farm scenes in corner shadow boxes that let the animals pop out. (Some wonderful 2nd graders did this activity for my visit.)