The Cow Who Climbed a Tree

January 4, 2016
Tina, a cow with a “thirst for discovery,” realizes the heights to which her curiosity can take her in this sweetly funny story from Merino (The Crocodile Who Didn’t Like Water). Whenever Tina shares her “amazing ideas” with her incurious sisters (a balloon over Tina’s head reveals that she’s keen on visiting the moon in a rocket), they proclaim them “Impossible!” and “Nonsense!” Undeterred, Tina climbs a tree and discovers a “friendly... and vegetarian” dragon, and the two trade stories and dreams of flying and fire-breathing. When Tina disappears, her concerned siblings venture into the woods, where they find Tina living out her dreams of flight (with help from a parachute) and decide to join in. Merino’s illustrations add greatly to the playfulness of a story in which cows, pigs, and several other flightless animals get a chance to soar; her cows are silly, rotund figures on spindly legs, and she uses splotches of bright color to represent the leaves of trees in the forest. It’s a lighthearted and amusing endorsement of leaving one’s comfort zone, ignoring naysayers, and giving dreams a chance. Ages 4–8.