Catch that Goat

Catch that Goat!: A Market Day in Nigeria

Author and Illustrator: Polly Alakija

Publishing Company: Barefoot Books

Copyright Date: 2002

40 pages

Multicultural - Nigeria

                When I first picked up this book while looking for different multicultural texts to use within the classroom, I was very intrigued by the cover. I feel that students would be intrigued by this as well. Therefore they would be interested in reading the story. In Catch that Goat by Polly Alakija, Ayoka is in search of a lost goat her mother asked her to watch while she is away. On her search, Ayoka travels all through the market place. All along her way the market people have one thing after another disappearing. Will Ayoka find her goat?

                I really enjoyed the illustrations seen within this book. I was very interested in the fact that Polly Alakija completed both the story was well as the illustrations for this book. Overall, the illustrations beautifully depicted the market place. Alakija used very bright vibrant coloring that created interesting illustrations. These illustrations were created with mixed medium on watercolor paper. These illustrations were double spread in order to incorporate all of the details within the market place. The text was brilliantly placed within word bubbles throughout the text. Even though this seemed like a somewhat simple way to place text, I have not seen that very often within the books I have been viewing throughout my book blogs.

                I really enjoyed this book. I would use this text within my classroom. I think this book is most suited for younger elementary classrooms. This is because the text is very simple, the biggest obstacle students would have with this text would be the unknown cultural terminology. I would use this book in my classroom to teach about the Nigerian culture. This book does a wonderful job of depicting their everyday market place. This book also has a great feature towards the end of the book that describes the Yoruba people. In this section of the text, Alakija has described the people, common dress, everyday life, location, and she also included information about the marketplace. I would also use this book to incorporate terms and language this culture commonly uses. This book includes counting and everyday terms the Yoruba people would use. Also, because this book incorporates counting, I would use this within a math lesson. Using this book in younger grades, you would be able to incorporate this into their math lessons.