Is Everyone Ready for Fun? (review)

Well, is everyone ready for fun? The trio of grinning cows in this crisply silly picture book is: they’re delightedly jumping up and down on the sofa. There’s less fun for Chicken, however, because it’s Chicken’s sofa that the heifers are gleefully flattening, and an attempt to forbid the cows’ jumping just results (as any contrary preschooler could have told you) in their choosing instead to dance and then wiggle on the increasingly smushed couch. Finally the tuckered-out trio opts for the fun of napping, whereupon Chicken decides that if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em. As usual, Thomas produces a snappy, structured text that’s a draw both for bouncy pre-readers and kids just starting to dip into reading for themselves; here, though, the hyperactive cows are having so much fun that audiences will probably be unable to resist jumping, dancing, and wiggling along. Big bold lines, solid high-contrast colors, and simple compositions combine in vivid illustrations that let nothing distract from the barnyard crowd’s goofing off. The cows’ manic cheer is funny in its own right, especially in the extreme close-ups that bring the viewer face to face with their huge, happy eyes, while poor Chicken is banished to the periphery of the spreads, sometimes only managing to poke his head up above the bottom margin. Pile on the floor pillows and have ’em act this one out as a sly lead-in to naptime as well as fun everyone is definitely ready for.