The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble, Illustrations: Steven Kellogg

Noble Hakes, Trinka. The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash. New York: Puffin Books, 1980.

In The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash, a little girl tells her mother about the adventures she experiences while visiting the local farm with her class. The story all begins with the mother asking her daughter how her field trip was only to get the response of “oh… boring…kind of dull…until the cow started crying.” Which then begins the story of all the debauchery, which occurs on the school field trip to the farm.

The artwork of this book is a cartoon. The colors used are vivid, and the pictures take up the entire page with little writing on each page. This is done so that the reader feels like they were on the farm, seeing this first hand The pictures really enhance the story because the words are so simple; the pictures really make the story of what occurred on the field trip come alive. The media used to create the artwork is a combination of water colors and pencils, pencil being used to show details like the beard on the farmer, while water colors are used in shadows and other large areas.

This book would be considered contemporary realistic fiction because it is often children in the modern time would go to a farm for a school field trip. This book is intended for younger children in elementary school, however adults will find the pictures and language of the book humorous and relatable to a conversation they may have with their own child about a school trip.