Description: "When Farmer Ed tells the animals to build a pen for the pigs, they scratch their heads. How will they even begin? Sheep steps up with his impressive math skills, but does the rest of the crew know what to do? Or will the pigs run amok forever? Get ready to laugh as the animals get creative and work the problem together."--
Brief description:
Davilyn Lynch was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, where she would spend most days drawing, escaping into a world of creativity and wonder. She grew up in an inspiring household surrounded by her father's abstract canvasses on every wall. After the distractions of life, it wasn't until her first child came along that she rediscovered her love of drawing and decided to make it a major part of her life.
With the help and support of her husband and close friends she was able to make her dream a reality and became a children's book illustrator. Being born biracial, (Filipino and Caucasian) Davilyn grew up in a community that was predominantly white and suffered discrimination due to others seeing her as 'different'. Davilyn wants to make sure she sends a positive message to young readers through her character illustrations that diversity among children and families is completely normal. Davilyn is self-taught, letting her passion and creativity be her guide in the picture books she works on.
Review Quotes: Venture to the barnyard for a lesson in math! Goat, Chicken, and Sheep face an ultimatum from Farmer Ed: Build a pigpen, or forfeit their barn dance. They have 20 feet of fencing, and the pen must enclose the largest possible area. Impatient Goat plans a 20-foot perimeter but hastily hammers together a rectangle just nine feet by one, "barely big enough for a mouse." Sheep patiently explains how to calculate the area ("Multiply the length times the width"), but again, Goat jumps into rebuilding without math. Now the pen is eight feet by two. The next rash iteration is three by seven: 21 feet in area. Better, and now Chicken notices a pattern. Sheep presses on with the explanation ("Each time we increase the length by one and decrease the width by one, the area of the rectangle increases"), only to be interrupted by Goat, who tries four by six and then nine by one again. At last Sheep draws the five-by-five plan, yielding the largest area, as all agree--even Farmer Ed, who has one more request, however: a 100-square-foot triangular pen! The final two pages explain perimeter and the area of a rectangle. The jokes are corn-fed, the math clear (though there's no help with the triangle problem), and the goggle-eyed illustrations are wild, wacky, and amusing. A practical and entertaining introduction to plane geometry.-- "Kirkus Reviews"