Day 144: Where Is the Green Sheep?

Where Is the Green Sheep? is a book I have heard a lot about from other readers in the blogosphere, and today I finally brought it home from the library.  What a fun, cute read!  My son asked to read it four times in a row once we snuggled up for story time this afternoon, giggling more and more each time through. The story is simple -- somewhere, there is a green sheep, and we are trying to find him -- but the book is remarkably entertaining.  My son gets such a kick out of seeing a sheep sunbathing, reading a book in bed, and, my favorite, diving off a high-dive board.  My daughter was delighted by this book, too, happily pointing to the silly sheep on every page along the way.  To me, Where Is the Green Sheep? has all of the characteristics that make a picture book equally appealing to babies and preschoolers:  short, simple, rhyming text with repetitive phrases ("But where is the green sheep?"), and playful, colorful (yet not overly stimulating) illustrations.  Throw in some educational tidbits such as colors and opposites ("Here is the thin sheep, and here is the wide sheep... Here is the scared sheep, and here is the brave sheep"), and the adorable silliness of sheep doing all kinds of un-ovinely things (bathing in a tub full of bubbles, skiing down a slide, surfing, snorkeling), and we've got a real winner on our hands.  We just love Horacek's pen and watercolor illustrations, too, which I think are the perfect compliment to Fox's rhythmic text.  I can already tell that my son will soon be reading this book to us, and I have a feeling we'll borrow this one from the library enough times that we'll eventually just need to get our own copy.  I highly recommend this book for any child's library, especially if he or she is between the ages of one and four.  So where IS the green sheep?  You'll just have to read it for yourself to find out!