Coffee, Tea, or ME? The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

It's a tidy, picture-perfect farm with a white-whiskered, spotlessly-overalled farmer who seems to have it all under control. His fences are mended; his barn is freshly painted, and his animals are plump and happy:

HAY FOR HORSES, YES, INDEED!
GIVE THE CHICKENS CHICKEN FEED.

WHEN FARMER FEEDS THE HOGS THEIR SLOP,
THEY LOVE TO EAT THAT GLUEY GLOP.

BUT COW WOULD NEVER EAT THAT STUFF.
YOU COULDN'T PAY THE COW ENOUGH.

BECAUSE... COW LOVES COOKIES!

Yep, Cow seems to have a thing for cookies, and she's not above filching one from the baby's high chair tray, snitching a few from the cookie jar conveniently located on the counter by the open window, and even purloining half the box right out of a grocery sack in Farmer's car trunk. And yet Farmer seems not to mind Cow's peculiar cookie kleptomania. Could it be that they have a deal? Farmer seems to have plenty of cookies, and Cow, well, she has something to bring to the table, too!

FARMER PACKS A PICNIC LUNCH.
AND WHEN THE TWO SIT DOWN TO MUNCH,

HE TAKES THE COOKIES FROM THE TIN
AND COW GIVES MILK TO DUNK THEM IN!

It's definitely a marriage of cookie convenience between the two, and who could blame them? After all, who doesn't like cookies and milk? In Karma Wilson's newest, The Cow Loves Cookies (Margaret K. Elderry Books, 2010), her easily recognizable bouncy rhymes (see her popular Bear Snores On series) carry this light little farm tale forward without a hitch, while Marcellus Hall's wonderful illustrations do most of the heavy lifting. Hall uses simple black-line and watercolors to set off a variety of perspectives, even including a wide-angle aerial shot of the whole farm in the endpapers. The day's wash swings cheerily from the clothesline, a silo and outbuildings stand in the distance, while a little cat follows Farmer and Cow everywhere, knowing that there's going to be a bit of milk for her, too, on the final page. It's a joyful little bucolic visit, just right for preschoolers prepping for their first field trip to a local farm or for kids just getting hungry for a midafternoon snacktime.