SHEEP BLAST OFF!
by Nancy Shaw & illustrated by Margot Apple
Sheep have shopped, hiked, trick-or-treated; now readers find sheep in space! A rocket lands in the middle of the meadow and in no time, “Sheep snoop. Sheep explore. / Sheep climb through the spaceship door.” Shaw’s familiar, bouncy rhymes are well-matched to the loopy plot, with weightless sheep rolling around inside the ship, and alien sheep (green with antennae that contain extra eyes) coming aboard to help them out of an interplanetary mess. Back home safely in the meadow, the sheep snooze after their adventure on pink bedding under a big tree while the “rocket sheep” blast off. A key feature of Apple’s bright colored-pencil illustrations is the hilarious expressiveness of the ovine faces. The team’s long-running series continues to entertain, with text happily accessible to even the youngest readers. (Picture book. 3-6)