Cock-a-Doodle Quack! Quack! (review)

Poor Baby Rooster: he knows that it's his job to wake up everyone on the farm, but he just doesn't know what sound to utter. After asking around the barnyard, he learns what all the other animals say, and while his attempts at quacking, oinking, and mooing are wholehearted, they do not serve to wake up the animals. The wise old owl encourages him to learn by listening, so Baby Rooster gets up before dawn and, listening very carefully, attempts to mimic the sound he hears coming from the next farm; after a few mistaken attempts ("Cock-a-doodle-noo!" and "Cock-a-doodle-poo!"), he finally nails a perfect crow and wakes everybody up. While this doesn't have quite the exuberance of Palatini's similarly themed Moo Who? (BCCB 7/04), it's got lots of preschool appeal and immense storytime potential, especially given the large-scale, crowd-friendly acrylic paintings. Baby Rooster is a determined little clucker, and there is loads of conceptual humor in the idea that only a precisely executed cock-a-doodle-doo will serve to wake up a sleeping farm. Effective repetition and playful language (each time the rooster is taught a new animal sound, he gratefully acknowledges, "Oh, that's really good" before trying it out himself) contribute to the appeal of the fluid narrative. Busby's bold illustrations employ softly textured brushstrokes to encompass broad fields of color; subtle shading and spotty touches of color and texture further the dimensionality. Most of the animals are a touch on the enjoyably rotund side, especially the roly-poly baby rooster who is approximately as wide as he is tall, with rounded comb, beak, and feathers. There's always room for another tale of barnyard noise, and this one will most certainly satisfy.