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#39 Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin (2000)
43 points

Si, se puede!  Yes they can!  When Labor Day rolls around and I need to make a labor-related book display (oh yeah, that’s how I roll) what do I like to pull out?  Nothing short of the old Click, Clack, Moo.  We’ve talked about how a lot of the books on this list make for good readalouds, but this book is, for me, a staple.  I sometimes forget how good it is too.  So simple.  So perfect.  “The duck was a neutral party.”  How you top sentences like that?

Children’s Literature described the plot as, ” ‘Cows that type? Impossible!’ That’s what Farmer Brown thinks when he first hears the ‘click, clack’ from the barn, but then he reads the note the cows write him. All they want is electric blankets for the cold barn. When he refuses, they go on strike. What’s worse for the farmer is that the strike spreads to the cold hens as well. Duck finally negotiates a compromise. Unfortunately for Farmer Brown, the ducks have learned from all this, leaving us with a smile at the ending.”

Yup.  It’s a picture book about the man keeping you down.  I wish I could remember whether or not it appears in Tales for Little Rebels (no index) or I’d quote you some good old-fashioned union politics as well.  Ah well.  For now we’ll just have to leave it at “really good story” and be satisfied with that.  Eventually the duck would come to rule the series, but in this tale he has a relatively understated (comically so) role.

Some folks have told me that the book is outdated because kids don’t know what typewriters are anymore.  You say outdated, I say classic.  Even if you don’t initially recognize what a typewriter is, it explains itself pretty well right from the start.  Besides, if it were a laptop then the title might have been Tip, Tap, Moo and that’s far less interesting.

Publishers Weekly said of it, “Kids and underdogs everywhere will cheer for the clever critters that calmly and politely stand up for their rights, while their human caretaker becomes more and more unglued.”

It’s not too late to join this year’s Reading the World Challenge if you haven’t already – just take a look at this post for details.

In our family we have all joined together and read picture books set in Mongolia, which is our current focus on PaperTigers. I had to hunt around a bit but we came up with a good selection. I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail here as they are all gathered up in my Personal View, Taking a step into children’s books about Mongolia. We have really enjoyed delving into the culture and heritage of Mongolia and these picture books have been read all together and individually.

One bedtime Older Brother read Horse Song: the Naadam of Mongolia by Ted and Betsy Lewin (Lee and Low, 2008) to Little Brother – quite a long read and they were both engrossed. Watching them from the outside, as it were, I came to an added appreciation of the dynamics of Ted and Betsy’s collaboration, both in the energy of their shared enthusiasm and participation in the events surrounding the famous horse-race, and also of being struck by a busy, crowded scene one page and then giggling at the turn of expression on an individual study’s face the next.

And I’ll just share with you Little Brother’s reaction to Suho’s White Horse, which you can read about in a bit more detail in my Books at Bedtime post earlier this week:

It was a moving story. The governor made me angry because he broke his word and was cruel to Suho and his horse.
[Listening to the musical version played on the Mongolian horsehead fiddle, the morin khuur] Once you know the story, you can tell which part of the music is telling which part of the story. How do they make that music with just two strings? It fills me with awe.

I also read The Horse Boy: A Father’s Miraculous Journey to Heal His Son by Rupert Isaacson (Viking, 2009), an amazing story of a family’s journey to Mongolia in search of horses and shamans to seek healing for the torments that were gripping their five-year-old autistic son’s life: as Isaacson puts it with great dignity, his “emotional and physical incontinence”. If you have already read this humbling, inspiring book (and even if you haven’t), take a look at this recent interview three years on from their adventurous journey. Now I need to see the film!

And talking of films (which we don’t very often on PaperTigers, but I can’t resist mentioning this one), The Story of the Weeping Camel is a beautiful, gentle film that takes you right to the heart of Mongolian life on the steppe. Who would have thought a documentary film about a camel could be so like watching a fairy tale? Don’t be put off by the subtitles – our boys love this film. Take a look at the trailer –