Farm Musicale: Cock-a-doodle-do, Creak, Pop-Pop, Moo by Jim Aylesworth

Who needs a band, when you have a constant concerto in progress!

ROOSTER CROWS

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO

WAKE UP GIRLS, AND LITTLE BOYS, TOO!

It's a semi-rhythmical rehearsal as the kids clatter downstairs, with the frying ham in the skillet providing the percussion--POP POP! From the milking shed, a quartet of milk cows moo a melody. CLUCK go the laying hens looking to be fed. Sparrows peep and baby chicks cheep. Breakfast utensils clank and clink.

The day bring work and very little play, but you can always make music any day..

Pups yip; bees buzz. CAW! complains the crow, as the boys chop wood. Cow bells clink as they slowly let the crickets' chirp call them to line up to return to the barn again, as Ma and Pa rest and rock to the squeak of the porch rockers. Granma's needles click with the beat as the big old clock ticks.

CROW CALLS OUT, HOO HOO, HOO HOO!

GOOD NIGHT, BOYS... AND LITTLE GIRLS, TOO!

And every night on the farm is a nocturne, in Jim Aylesworth's fantasia of farm life, Cock-a-doodle-doo, Creak, Pop-pop, Moo. Every player performs his part in a symphony of sound, and artist Brad Sneed adds his charming illustrations to the performance to make perfect harmony of life.  For class animal sound fun or perhaps for a  soothing bedtime scherzo.

Identity Crisis: Cowie by Elizabeth Rose Stanton

Everyone called him Cowie because Cowie loved everything about cows.

He's a donkey who loves their soft kind eyes and their calm and steady personas.

Cowie wanted to be content like the cows.

No one rode them, or made them carry things.

With his friends, Duckie, Mouse, and Chick, Cowie sits under the tree in the pasture and decides that a cow is what he is meant to be.

He tries standing like the cows in the barn, chewing his cud and swatting flies with his tail. So far, so good. But he's still not a COW!

He tries to moo, but it comes out all wrong.

OOOOOOM!

The cows stop grazing and stare at him as only cows can stare.

Duckie and Mouse and Chick try to fine-tune his MOO.

KAEUQS!

KCAUQ!

That's no good! Maybe Cowie needs a makeover. But even with his teeth brushed and with freshly minty breath, his MOO still comes out backwards.

Will Chick, Mouse, and Duckie find a way to turn Cowie's MOO around?

Maybe cow identity is partly a contented state of mind, in Elizabeth Rose Stanton's latest, Cowie (Simon and Schuster, 2020). And at last Cowie sits quietly under his shade tree in the pasture, wearing his honorary cowbell, a bit reminiscent of little Ferdinand under his tree in Munro Leaf's classic The Story of Ferdinand. This story shares the same simple message, with Stanton's gently humorous characters done in beautiful soft watercolor illustrations set spot-art style against bright white pages. A lovely book with a lovely theme--be yourself, but be the you you want to be!