It’s amazing where a dream can take a person, or in this case, a cow. But out to sea? Who ever heard of such a thing? Little Moo, that’s who. In Lisa Wheeler’s latest title, Sailor Moo: Cow at Sea, we follow a courageous and determined young cow as she sets out to become a sailor. The rest of the cows in the pasture are content to stand and graze and chew, but not little Moo. Moo has bigger ideas. She dreams of seeing ocean swells and sniffing ocean smells. So as soon as she is old enough, little Moo leaves the pasture behind and hoofs it to the bay.
Little Moo follows her dream, and she is persistent even when times get tough. She doesn’t back down when Captain Silver Claw shoos her away. Instead, she looks him straight in the eye and offers to be head cook for his ship full of cats (by providing them with milk every day). When Moo can’t understand the cat language spoken on board, she makes friends with the manatees, or cows of the sea, who swim alongside the ship. In a storm, Sailor Moo falls overboard, but thanks to her manatee friends, she is saved and carried to a pirate ship full of cattle. On board, Sailor Moo meets the pirate Red Angus, who instantly falls in love with her and decides to give up the pirate life to marry his dairy queen. Wheeler’s use of rollicking words, whimsical rhymes and a plethora of cow puns make Sailor Moo a joy to read both silently and aloud. And the colorful and witty illustrations by Ponder Goembel are a delight to the eye. Sailor Moo is a story that should be shared with every child, young and old, whether they dream little dreams or big ones. Wheeler reminds us throughout the book that dreams don’t just come true on their own, and they definitely won’t come true if we merely stand, graze and chew through life. Instead, as Wheeler not so subtly portrays, we must take life by the horns.
