Slim and Miss Prim

When chatty Miss Prim sets out to save Slim, a cowboy who has been captured by a band of cattle rustlers, the outlaws decide to capture her as well--until her constant lecturing drives the rustlers to set everyone free.

Grade 2-5-Slim, a ranch hand whose off-key singing assaults the ears of his horse and the local fauna, is unabashedly in love with Miss Marigold Prim, the proprietor of Prim Rose Ranch. With a huge pink bow on her hat and another on her behind, the woman is the epitome of propriety. She maintains her white-gloves demeanor even as she rescues Slim and her cattle from ill-mannered rustlers. Harris's droll watercolors fit perfectly with Kinerk's tongue-in-cheek, lovesick poetry. There are plenty of humorous details: the cattle sport an elaborate flower brand; a grizzled rustler waiting in line to take a bath holds a yellow ducky in one hand and keeps a pink towel decorated with ducks wound around his paunch with the other; and "Pizza" and "Root Beer" signs adorn the storefronts along with the traditional "Bar" and "General Store." Who wouldn't get a kick out of pouting rustlers or a sighing prairie dog or Miss Prim lecturing her captors on darning? A rib-tickling read-aloud.
John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harris's (The Three Little Javelinas) watercolor caricatures and the rollicking verse of newcomer Kinerk make mighty fine pardners in this ballad about a patient cowhand named Slim and his boss, the garrulous Miss Marigold Prim: "He mended her fences and herded her cattle/ and listened at length to Marigold's prattle." One day, as Slim rounds up the herd, a band of scruffy rustlers kidnaps him and steals his cattle. As months pass, the feisty yet ladylike Miss Prim rides through county after county in search of her missing employee. But word of her quest reaches the rustler chief, whose men manage to snatch her as well. This lady, however, sure can talk, and her excessive chatter ("She lectured on manners, she lectured on crime,/ the importance of keeping appointments on time,/ brushing your teeth after breakfast and dinner,/ the foods you should eat to help you get thinner") finally does the bad guys in. Harris offers some of his funniest work as he shows the properly coiffed Miss Prim pointing a white-gloved finger at the boorish bandits, whose table manners are an object lesson in Don'ts. Though Kinerk's rhythm skips a beat or two every now and then and he serves up some questionable rhymes (on/dawn; lot/ought), most of his rhymed couplets will roll right off the tongue. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Matching painted illustrations replete with skillfully drawn caricatures and sight gags to a rhymed text that stays metrically consistent without sounding singsong, this cowboy love story will find a larger audience of adults than children, but may appeal to fans of Arthur Yorink's Whitefish Will Rides Again (1994) or cowboy poetry in general. After the love songs that Slim warbles as he minds the cattle of garrulous, aptly named Miss Marigold Prim draw a gang of rustlers, she (side) saddles up and sets out to the rescue. Captured, she delivers such a nonstop series of lectures--" on crime, / the importance of keeping appointments on time, / brushing your teeth after breakfast and dinner, / the foods you should eat to help you grow thinner, / how to darn socks and how to mend pants, / covering food to keep out the ants," and so on--that the frantic bad guys finally send her, Slim, and the cattle home. A rustic wedding ensues. For readers who prefer more physical heroism from their western heroines, pair this with books such as Diane Stanley's Saving Sweetness (1996). John Peters