COCK-A-DOODLE-OOPS!

Zemke provides more farmyard huggermugger (George Shannon’s Wise Acres, 2004) to illustrate Degman’s versified tale of animals trying to substitute at sunrise for an absent rooster.

Deciding that he needs a week at the beach to catch up on his sleep, Rooster enlists fellow livestock to crow each morning to wake Farmer McPeeper while he’s gone. But despite the best efforts of Sheep (“Her cock-a-doodle baaaaaaaa / didn’t travel too faaa. / In fact, she made barely a peep”), Cow (“udder disaster!”) and the rest, McPeeper sleeps on. Looking properly popeyed and panicky in the cartoon scenes, the other animals welcome Rooster back at last—only to learn that he’s caught a cold and can barely wheeze. As in her prizewinning light verse for 1 Zany Zoo (illustrated by Colin Jack, 2010), the author displays a gift for rhymes and language that is clever rather than forced. She also skips the obvious (trite) solution of a general hullabaloo and just has Rooster leave a whispered “cock-a-doodle-doo” on McPeeper’s bedside phone—a technology assist that displays pleasing ingenuity. Farmer McPeeper wakes up, feeling like he’s slept for a week…which he has.

Puns and foolery pitched just right for newly independent readers.