The Farmer's Wife

By Idries Shah

Subjects: Children: Grades 2-3

Description: An apple falls into a hole while the Farmer's Wife is gathering apples and tries to command a series of animals, people, and inanimate objects to retrieve the apple for her. However, the Farmer's Wife never says "please" and declares each animal, person, and object to be naughty, which my little reader noticed right away. My little reader found the Farmer's Wife to be an uninteresting character, and that made the book not fun. Additionally, there is repetitive incorrect grammar and unnecessary run-on sentences. (By run-on's, I do not mean the sentences with the multiple "because" clauses, which were fine.) The book editor simply did a poor job.