One Cow Coughs: A Counting Book for the Sick and Miserable

An entertaining counting book is about all of the sick animals in the barnyard--moaning mules, shaking sheep, hens with headaches, and turkeys with welts on their knees--but the animals soon come up with some clever cures.

PreSchool-Grade 1-The animals are ailing down on the farm, as one cow coughs, "Two mules moan,/Three sheep shake,/Four hens hold their heads which ache." The count culminates with 10 turkeys weeping "...at the welts on their knees." There's a cure in store, however, as the numbers shrink back down to one and the resourceful patients swab, spray, blow, and gargle their way back to good health. An even rhythm and natural-sounding rhymes make the text easy to read aloud. Simple and appealing, the boldly colored, cut-paper illustrations add detail to the silly situations. The cow coughs out an unpleasant stream of half-chewed hay, the hen's headache is caused by being pelted with windblown apples, and "Five goats faint" as a result of a passing skunk. In one double-page spread, oxen sniffle and geese sneeze while a pipe-smoking farmer drives by on a fume-spitting tractor. Although not necessarily a first purchase, this might be just what the doctor ordered for those endlessly boring sick-in-bed days.
Joy Fleishhacker, New York Public Library
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A rhyming book of numbers that has as its cast of characters a series of ``sick and miserable'' barnyard animals, such as a coughing cow, shaking sheep, moaning mules, sniffling oxen, weeping turkeys, and sneezing geese. Eventually, all the aches and pains are soothed away, as will be those of readers happily distracted by the charming conceit. The illustrations, which are colorful collages, have a strangely bleached and uniform look to them, which detracts slightly from their overall effectiveness. Nevertheless, an excellent choice for the bedridden rug-rat. (Picture book. 4-7) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 3-5. Here's an unusual creation: a counting book for the flu season. As the numbers mount from 1 to 10, pictures show groups of sick animals--"Two mules moan, Three sheep shake." As the numbers diminish from 10 to 1, pictures show animals finding relief from their ills--"Three sheep sleep, Two mules drink." Dypold's cut-paper collages are vivid in color (the hogs are fuchsia, the cows almost orange), and they're filled with broad motion. The appealing result makes the book eminently suitable for the very young. Mary Harris Veeder