To Market, To Market by Anne Miranda

This story is modeled after the rhyme “To market, to market to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again jigidy jig.” In the story, a lady goes to the market to buy pig. She comes homes to drop the pig off and she has to leave again to go buy a hen. When she comes home with the hen, the pig was messing up the house. She keeps leaving the house to buy a new animal and every time she comes home, the newest animal is doing something to her house. The lady starts to get frustrated with all the animals running around and acting crazy. The lady is trying to calm all the animals down and in the process of doing this, she is getting hungry and cranky because she can’t make her lunch. However, the animals see that she is upset, so they take her to the market. The animals help her pick out lots and lots of vegetables and when they get home, everyone gets soup for lunch.

This would be a good book for K-2 to learn rhyming words and new vocabulary words. The whole books is a rhyme so students could try and guess which word is going to come next, based on the pictures and the word that was already said. New vocabulary words are also introduced. When they are at the market buying vegetables, all the vegetables are illustrated and the word is written right next to it. If children are being read this book enough, they will start to pick up on the new words and can start to use them in their conversations.