Mud-Slinging! Vote for ME! by Ben Clanton

Well, what's so great about YOU?

I'm a super cute elephant!

How can you not vote for someone as adorable as me?

Political speeches are prone to bragging, and Elephant is not above a bit of braggadocio from the podium.

So Donkey tries a bit of bribery:

If you'll vote for me, I'll give you a sucker!

So Elephant ups the ante:

If you pick me, I'll give you PEANUTS!

So the political competitors pivot to some name-calling!

STINKY Poop Scooper!

NINCOMPOOP!

This campaign degenerates into a bit of traditional MUDSLINGING!

SLOP!

PLOP!

It's politics as usual, in Ben Clanton's Vote for Me! (Tundra Books), which offers a satiric look at campaigns and elections which prepares youngsters for some of the usual political palaver in the election scene. Ironically, Clanton gives the clandestine candidate Mouse the win this time, in a silly, sarcastic look at the traditional candidates, but this tongue-in-cheek look at elections make a good jumping-off-point for school and home discussions of the important political scene.

Other top-selling comic offerings by author-illustrator Ben Clanton include Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea (A Narwhal and Jelly Book 1), and sequels, Rot, the Cutest in the World! and It Came in the Mail. (read my reviews here).

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!

"Grammar Don't Matter!" I Yam A Donkey by Cece Bell

.. . DID YOU SAY, "I YAM A DONKEY?"

THE PROPER WAY IS TO SAY THAT IS "I AM A DONKEY."

YOU IS A DONKEY, TOO?" SNORTS DONKEY. "YOU IS A FUNNY-LOOKING DONKEY."

A pedantic sweet potato in pince nez spectacles should've known better when he takes on the task of instructing a toothy donkey in proper English usage.

"NO, I AM A YAM. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO SAID 'I AM A DONKEY.'"

The grammarian yam is going nowhere fast with this linguistic lesson. The donkey insists on hearing "I yam" and "I am" as the same. Furthermore, he has no apparent familiarity with the conjugation of the verb "to be."

"YOU IS SILLY!"

But a good grammarian never gives up! Yam proceeds through the conjugation: I AM...YOU ARE, SHE IS....

The argument begins to draw a crowd: "Grammar fight!" Beet yells to a carrot and three green beans.

Beet explains that while Donkey IS a critter, he, Green Beans and Carrot ARE vegetables. Donkey gets a message, but not the one Yam intended.

"OH! YOU IS LUNCH!"

The lesson ends in a not-exactly-unexpected MUNCH and CRUNCH, in Cece Bell's newest, I Yam a Donkey! (Houghton Mifflin Clarion Books, 2015), which just goes to show that... well..., um... er.... "Don't get into a grammatical dispute with a donkey if you are a YAM?" Not a whole lot of linguistic information gets imparted here, but this book offers comic characters and a super silly slice of wordplay about a minor point of pronunciation of "I am"..., and gives Newbery Honor author Bell a chance to play around with words and the painful point that some arguments are futile in the face of serious issues, like how a vegetable should dispute with a large, big-molared herbivore.... Very discretely and from a safe distance?

Cece Bell is also the author and illustrator of the award-winning El Deafo, Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover (Candlewick Sparks), and Tom Angleberger's Crankee Doodle (see review here.)