Cow Can't Sleep

PreS-K—When a cow can't sleep because the hay in the barn is too scratchy, she looks for a better place to rest and finds "a nice feathered mattress." Children will see that it's a flock of ducks before Belle realizes it. She goes for a drink and falls into the well, and the horses rescue her. Now she's looking for warmth and finds "some warm wool blankets to snuggle in." These, of course, are the sheep. Then it's off to the mud puddle, which turns out to be inhabited by the smelly pigs. The chicken coop makes her sneeze, the doghouse and hayloft don't work out well either, so she retreats back to the hay. But now it is inhabited by all the animals she displaced. She finally finds a soft, warm place to settle down. It's the farmer's bed, and the startled man and his wife awaken in the morning to find the sleeping cow snoring between them. The story is fun, but the digital illustrations ruin it. The cow looks bloated and distorted with grossly oversize lips. All of the animals have round, Ping-Pong-ball enlarged eyes, but at least they remain cartoon renditions of what they're supposed to be. It's the cow that's so disturbing.—Ieva Bates, Ann Arbor District Library, MI