Review_CHILDREN’SReview_CHILDREN’S
72 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JANUARY 27, 2020
An infant clown proves anything but amused in
LaReau and Cordell’s picture book.Picture Books
Baby Clown: A Star Is Born
Kara LaReau, illus. by Matthew Cordell.
Candlewick, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7636-
9743-3
LaReau’s absorbing problem-solving
tale offers a funny look at grown-ups
stymied by a very small human. Baby
Clown cries all the time, and loudly.
Boffo and Frieda Clown, his harassed
parents, are stuck; nothing they try
works. “WAAAAH!!!” spreads across the
pages, the visual equivalent of infant
screams radiating through space. “There
is no room for crying in my circus,” says
Mr. Dingling, the big boss. The two per-
formers wear their clown costumes and
makeup even when they’re at home, which
adds hilarity to their earnest diaper changes
and bedtime routines. Frieda’s multicol-
ored wig and Boffo’s electric blue hair are
drawn by Cordell (Explorers) at his antic
best, in scribbly spreads filled with expres-
sions of comic dismay, false cheer, and
misery. LaReau (the Infamous Ratsos
series) narrates in straightforward prose,
using repetition to good effect: “The tra-
peze artists tried./ Then the animals tried./
Even the wire walker tried./ But still, Baby
Clown cried.” Fortunately, it turns out that
Baby Clown has a natural bent for perfor-
mance. Even clowns may find themselves
rearing a fussy child, but all is not lost:
communities can pitch in, and children can
find their way. And when all else fails, try
thunderous applause. Ages 3–7. Author’s
agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt
Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Rosemary Stimola,
Stimola Literary Studio. (Apr.)Little Cheetah’s Shadow
Marianne Dubuc, trans. from the French by
VeroK Agency. Princeton Architectural Press,
$17.95 (30p) ISBN 978-1-61689-840-3
This gentle lesson in conflict resolution
by Dubuc (Up the Mountain Path) opens as
Little Cheetah casts about with a flashlight,
looking for Little Shadow. Little Cheetah
finds the shadow—who is just like him,
only soft and gray rather than yellow and
spotted—in a tree, brooding. Asked why
he ran away, Little Shadow complains:“You always get to choose where we go.
And you always catch my tail in the door.”
They try switching places. Now Little
Shadow walks ahead. Sure enough, Little
Shadow inadvertently shuts the door on
Little Cheetah’s tail. “That hurt a lot,”
says Little Cheetah, “who now understood
why Little Shadow had been upset.”
Without a mean or spiteful word, the two
work out their differences so that both feel
things are fair. Dubuc’s writing is straight-
forward and unsentimental, and she draws
with precision, furnishing Little Cheetah’s
house with plants, pictures, even crumbs on
the table. The lessons to be learned are
made more interesting by the characters’
distinctive relationship. Though they’re
not siblings, they’re together all the time,
so working things out is a necessity—one
approached with clear generosity and affec-
tion. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)Escape Goat
Ann Patchett, illus. by Robin Preiss Glasser.
HarperCollins, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-
288339-1
In this follow-up to Lambslide, Patchett
and Glasser return to the Farmers’ busy
farm. This time, the focus is a happy-go-
lucky unnamed goat who’s a serial escapee.
He never goes far, and he causes little
harm—climbing over the fence of his pen,
he visits the horses and cows, eats a cabbage
from the garden, and “scratched an itch on
a pig’s back because the pig couldn’t reach
it himself.” But the humans soon realize
that the animal makes a convenient fall
goat for their screw-ups. The Farmer boys
blame Escape Goat for trampling the
flower bed (they did it), Mrs. Farmer
blames him for kicking over a bucket of
paint (she did it)—the blaming continues.It’s up to young Nicolette Farmer, who
has been keeping track of the family’s fibs,
to demand justice. “EXCUSE ME!” she
shouts. “You’re punishing the goat for
things he didn’t do.” (The goat looks on in
winsome cluelessness, chewing on alfalfa.)
Readers may yearn for the anthropomor-
phized characters of the previous book,
but the lesson here, delivered with the
lightest of touches, is serious and unmis-
takable: justice, and goat justice in partic-
ular, will prevail. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)Knot Cannot
Tiffany Stone, illus. by Mike Lowery. Dial,
$17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7352-3080-4
Knot, a googly-eyed, looped piece of
bright orange rope “aches to be like Snake,”
a bright green reptile who can slither, hiss,
and shed her skin to look “brand-new.” But
when Snake is threatened by a sharp-beaked
bird, Knot realizes he knows something
Snake doesn’t: how to tie her into a big,
wide knot so the predator can’t swallow her.
The day is saved (gratitude is expressed as a
forked-tongue lick), and Snake is eagerly
schooled on how to turn herself into other
knots, including a timber hitch and a
stevedore. The text is peppered with word-
play that morphs from a stern “Can Knot
do this? Knot cannot” to “He’s a frayed
knot.” Goofy, diagrammatic cartooning
plays along, with lots of comically emphatic
hand-drawn annotations and commentary
(“TOO WIDE HA HA!” reads a key note
that leads up to the rescue). In the talented,
sublimely silly hands of Stone (Tallulah
Plays the Tuba) and Lowery (the Kid Spy
series), the question “What do I have to
offer the world?” seems far less knotty.
4–8. Author’s agent: Hilary McMahon,
Westwood Creative Artists. Illustrator’s agent:
Susan McCabe, Lilla Rogers Studios. (Apr.)★ Sorry (Really Sorry)
Joanna Cotler, illus. by Harry Bliss. Philomel,
$17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-984-81247-6
At the farm where author and children’s
book editor Cotler and artist Bliss’s (Good
Rosie!) emotionally honest story is set, bad
moods aren’t just contagious—they’re
epidemic. Cow, made grumpy by muddy
hooves, kicks some muck in Duck’s face;
to add insult to injury, she says she did
because “I felt like it.... And I’m not
sorry.” Duck, now in an equally foul state,
picks on Frog, who lashes out at BirdChildren’s/YA
continued on p. 74