Karl, Gemma, and Meera are excited for the opening of the farm that has been their dream since kindergarten. There is just one problem - their sheep and turkeys have escaped! While Karl and the farm's new caretaker, Scottish farmer Flora McDonald, track the sheep to the nearby grocery store, Gemma and Meera must gather the clues that will piece together the unlikely events that happen to the missing turkeys.
This book has so many things in it that kids just naturally love: kids taking charge, animals in silly situations, a sense of suspense and mystery, and a happy ending. Though the characters are definitely older than the average age of the target audience, the tone and humor are spot-on for the early elementary reader. Animal lovers will be pleased by the occasional passages written from the point of view of the various animals, but even kids who are less thrilled with animal-centric stories will engage with the characters and their detective work instead.
The design of the book is also very appealing. The illustrations at the start of each chapter hint at events to follow, and they show the racial diversity of the characters that is not explicitly discussed in the text. Katherine McEwan's tiny lines and cartoonish faces remind me of drawings by illustrators like Matthew Cordell and Marla Frazee. I especially like the way McEwan shows the animals' personalities in their faces. Another appealing aspect of the design are the little footprints along the bottom of each page. In the chapters focusing on the search for the sheep, they are hoofprints, and in the turkey chapters, they are little turkey prints. This is a nice visual cue to help kids keep track of the switch from one part of the story to another. I also think those are nice touches to have on pages that are otherwise nothing but text.
There are so many books for kids about animals, but this series stands out for me because the author is an actual zoologist with firsthand knowledge of caring for animals. There are no talking animals in this book, but the animals have realistic personalities and minds of their own that give them a more active role in the story than in many books about kids and their animal obsessions. The Silver Street Farm series is a perfect read-alike for the Lulu series by Hilary McKay, also imported from the UK by Candlewick Press. For more suggestions for readers who like animals, check out my lists about kids and their dogs and farm animals.
I received a digital ARC of Escape from Silver Street Farm from my local public library.
For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat.
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