Where's My Cow and other fun children's books

Like many people who've read to children...or have read children's books... I have a few favorites.  

One of my all-time favorites is a fairly recent book by Terry Pratchett called Where's My Cow?  It fit's in with Pratchett's other discworld book and is really two books in one.  It's the story of Commander Vimes, who is reading a story to his son....
You have to read it to appreciate it.  If you can't wait to get to a bookstore, here is a youtube version of a man reading to his family.  You can take or leave his micro-sermon at the end of the broadcast.
Interesting sidenote - this is not your average children's book.  There are references to some of the colorful street people and characters featured in Pratchett's adult novels of the disworld.  In fact, there's a thread on a forum about where to shelve this picture book - children's section? adult?  I just put it in the fiction area with the other Pratchett novels.

I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll is a book I've enjoyed in the last few months. This is a book both my granddaughter and grandson has requested almost nightly when they spend the weekend with us.  When we first started out reading it, I tried a few different monster voices - no way.  They couldn't handle the voices.  Of course they were four and three years old, and it's entirely possible at this age, that your grandmother might just turn into a monster and EAT YOU UP!  So I respected their insecurities and after reading this story to them a few times they began to reqeust a few different voices.  So now, there are at least four different voices I use for each of the monsters.  This adds to the whole experience.  Very fun reading with lots of possibilities, this features a rather strange little boy who likes to keep a scary monster under his bed so that he's not tempted to get up at night.  Weird, but whatever works.  Only one night his monster has gone fishing and leaves a note that he'll be gone for a week.  This leads to the boy interviewing a few different monsters who just don't measure up.  After all, it's not every monster who instills the right mix of fear and comfort for sleeping...

Another fun book for changing the fear of monsters into an acceptance of monsters as fiction or fun is No Such Thing by Jackie French Koller.  A little boy keeps hearing things under his bed and keeps calling his mom to check it out.  His mom keeps telling him there's no such thing as monsters.  At the same time, a little monster keeps hearing noises from the area above his place under a bed.  He keeps calling his mom, who keeps assuring him that there's no such thing as boys.  This is a strange little tale that celebrates differences at the same time as showing how much we're all a like.  The grandkids love this one, especially the end, where the two meet and decide to play a little trick on their moms...


Where's My Cow will always be my favorite (the kids don't quite appreciate that one as much as I do) while the two monster books are currently the most requested bedtime book on weekends.  Luckily, I also enjoy these two monster books.  So until the kids find a new book to obsess over (they tend to love to re-read books, sometimes over and over and over and over...etc, throughout the same day!), I Need My Monster and No Such Thing are getting well used, enough that I might have to buy new copies (I have paperback versions).

Where's My Cow? by Terry Pratchett - review

Where's My Cow?
Terry Pratchett
illustrated by Melvin Grant
children's books
******
cover- I love this cover. The almost lifelike rendition of the cow and the painting like quality of the background...then that little cartoon image in the two corners...brilliant. And the stamp - approved by the librarian of Unseen University. If you've read the discworld books, you'll get it, but you haven't...see there's this series of books. In some of the books there's this University, the Unseen University. It's quite magical, because it houses not only all the wizards and sorcerers in Ankh-Morpork (or almost all of them) keeping them from harming the innocent - and giving them a place to practice their arts, but it also holds all the magical books. Some of the books have to be chained down, or they'll escape. In charge of the library at Unseen University is an orangutang. He's very capable - he actually used to be a human, but he's pretty happy as an orangutang, in charge of the library. Those prehensile feet and hands, with the thumbs and all, turned out to be very handy - after all....So - he approves this book. ook!

Art work - If I rated artwork (which I don't think should be done, art is subjective, after all) I would rate it a 6 out of 6, or 10 of 10, or whatever. The artwork is beautiful. Whatever the subject was on the page, an animal, a transient, The Duchess, Vimes or young Sam, the art was amazing. Go to Melvin Grant's website and take a look at his gallery. Beautiful work, in a variety of subjects
I approve this book also. LOL, doesn't that sound vain? I do though. I've wanted this book for a long time, since it ties in so nicely with the other discworld novels...it's great because it's really three books in one. You'll have to read it to understand what I'm saying...

Commander Vimes, a frequent character of the discworld novels is one of the characters in this book. He's reading a book to his son....and the book he's reading...you get to read that while reading about Vimes reading to his son...see? There's another aspect to this, but at the moment I can't really explain it.

So Commander Vimes is reading this book and he is making all these animal sounds, because it's a book called Where's My Cow? So the book within this book has all these animals and animal sounds and someone is obviously looking for his cow....Vimes is reading this, and making the noises for his son - which his son loves - when he suddenly decides the book is a bit lame, in fact that it has nothing to do with real life. After all they live in a huge city, where all the animals are...cooked.

So he begins changing the book while reading, to something HE can relate to. Criminals. He starts naming the usual suspects that he has to deal with on a daily basis...and they all have some quirk, great names, and the pics - oh man, the pics are great. These aren't your normal tame children's book pics - so beware of this if you plan to read it to your kids or grandkids. They will have to have a good sense of the absurd and humor.

I Loved This Book.

I read it to both of my grandkids, and they know it's Granma's SPECIAL BOOK that they have to have ME bring down for them, so we can read it together. And like Vimes, I love making the animal sounds, and I even try to make the rather gross usual Suspects's sounds. like Hrrumph, etc. The kids laugh and laugh. I laugh and laugh. A good time is had by all. Grandma loves these type of childrens books.

Twisted, snarky, edgy, slightly off children's books.

Oh Yeah!