Cowboy and Octopus
Peanut butter and jelly. George and Martha. Frog and Toad. Cowboy and . . . Octopus? Yes, that’s right. Meet Cowboy and Octopus—the next great pair to become a household name. Cowboy likes beans’n’bacon and bacon’n’beans. Octopus eats raw seafood. Octopus prefers knock-knock jokes, but Cowboy doesn’t get them. How will these two ever be friends?\ Illustrated in funky, vintage-style cut-outs and told in several humorous mini-stories, the famous Stinky Cheese Man duo of Scieszka and Smith have...
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Peanut butter and jelly. George and Martha. Frog and Toad. Cowboy and . . . Octopus? Yes, that's right. Meet Cowboy and Octopus—the next great pair to become a household name. Cowboy likes beans'n'bacon and bacon'n'beans. Octopus eats raw seafood. Octopus prefers knock-knock jokes, but Cowboy doesn't get them. How will these two ever be friends? Illustrated in funky, vintage-style cut-outs and told in several humorous mini-stories, the famous Stinky Cheese Man duo of Scieszka and Smith have created sweet—and of course hilarious—tales of an unlikely friendship.Horn Book. . . surprisingly fresh, and genuinely funny.
\ Horn Book. . . surprisingly fresh, and genuinely funny.\ \ \ \ \ Elizabeth WardIf there is a more inventive duo at work in the picture-book field than Scieszka and Smith, co-creators of such gems as The Stinky Cheese Man and The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, I can't name it. The pair strikes gold again with this portrait in seven scenes of a very odd friendship. Not that kids will think a cowboy befriending an octopus is odd. That's the way they play.\ —The Washington Post\ \ \ Children's LiteratureThe very odd couple, Octopus and Cowboy, meet and find that “Some things work better with a friend.” A seesaw, for example. Shaking hands, however, takes a while, since Octopus has eight. Communication suffers when Cowboy takes Octopus's instructions too literally. When Cowboy surprises Octopus by making him dinner, unfortunately Octopus does not like Cowboy's favorite beans and bacon. But being his friend, Octopus tries to enjoy one bean at least. The friends share “scary” Halloween costumes, misunderstandings about knock-knock jokes, and honest opinions about their new hats. The silly fun supports the notion of the strange friendship. Smith continues to try out new media. This nonsense tale is visualized using a variety of collage objects. On the title page a pair of plastic scissors cuts out a “Western Heroes” paper doll; the multi-armed friend has been cut from a comic book. These figures remain constant through the seven episodes, for which titles have been constructed from cut-out letters. Other pictures, papers, and photographs are assembled to provide the contexts. Wispy orange clouds and a big yellow sun are cut from paper for background; a checkerboard tablecloth displays the plates of beans. Half of the endpapers display brands for cattle in brown on tan for the Cowboy; seashells on blue fill the other half for the Octopus. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalGr 1-5\ Picture-book readers meet an unlikely pair of friends here: a refined octopus and a cowboy who is a little rough around the edges. The two are actually paper cutouts: the title page reveals that Cowboy has been snipped from a Western Heroes paper-doll book and Octopus from a comic strip. Seven hilarious short stories are presented, beginning with the origin of the friendship, in which Cowboy is confused about a teeter-totter that doesn't seem to work until Octopus "repairs" it by sitting on the opposite end, and concluding with the pair gazing into the sunset of a picture postcard. All of the vignettes are silly and perfectly absurd; Scieszka captures a childlike dialogic cadence and ends the pieces with the sudden, agreeable solutions to problems that kids often come up with. Incorporating mid-20th-century illustrations, graphic art, newspaper clippings, and toys, the collage and mixed-media artwork perfectly matches the wacky text. The colors are slightly muted and the paper appears to have yellowed with age. The delightful paper protagonists never change poses, though Smith occasionally dresses them in zany paper hats and silly costumes, and their static nature adds to the humor. Share this title with devotees of Scieszka's and Smith's other collaborations and with fans of Mini Grey's Traction Man Is Here! (Knopf, 2005). Cowboy and Octopus prove that we all get by with a little help from our friends.\ —Shawn BrommerCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.\ \ \
