Quirky Critters: Lazy Daisy, Cranky Frankie by Mary Ellen Jordan

THIS IS MY CHICKEN.

SHE'S CALLED LIZZIE.

SHE SHOULD LAY EGGS,

BUT SHE'S TOO BUSY.

INSTEAD SHE'S DANCING IN THE AIR.

IN HER PURPLE UNDERWEAR.

If you feel you've found the funny farm, you're right.

All the critters here seem somewhat crazed. In addition to dizzy Lizzie, there's Daisy the cow who's too lazy to graze, and Fancy Nancy the pig who spends her days gazing at herself in the mirror. Then there's sheepdog Frankie, too cranky to round up a slew of silly sheep that litter the landscape.

Fortunately, there is one thing that these deranged domesticated goof-offs do well--sleep!

And that's a good quality, at least for characters in a bedtime story, and Mary Ellen Jordan's Lazy Daisy, Cranky Frankie: Bedtime on the Farm (Albert Whitman, 2013) brings it home in a tickle box turnover tale that will encourage shut-eye in little listeners. Jordan's easy-reading rhyming text and artist Andrew Weldon's large cartoon animals, done up in black line and flat pastel watercolors on bright white pages, give kids scads of silliness, from Chicken Lizzie roosting in her purple tighties on the clothesline to a top-hatted, roller-skating sheep, as they work their way down to the right time to hit the hay on this hilarious funny farm.