MILLIE TO THE RESCUE

Cats get stuck in trees all the time, but how does a whole farm end up there?

It’s déjà moo. Millie the cow may have used her hiding abilities for not-so-honorable purposes in Millie Waits for the Mail (2007). However, instead of hiding and scaring the mail carrier, now she loves to play hide-and-seek with her barnyard pals. But when the chickens, pigs and goats take all the good hiding places, she needs to find the best one. So she scampers up a tree. This seems to be perfect—no one can find her—except climbing up is a lot easier than climbing down. Millie is stuck! After a number of failed solutions that include a catapult and a ladder, suddenly all the animals and the farmer are up in the tree with Millie. (Well, not the chickens. They are down below, munching on popcorn, enjoying the shenanigans.) Luckily, the promise of cake lures the mail carrier to the farm, and he comes up with a foolproof rescue plan. Now, if only they could figure out how to rescue the cake too....Steffensmeier brilliantly infuses illustrations with humorous details, this time with even more opportunity, given the expansive view from the treetop.

While difficult not to compare to Oliver Jeffers’ Stuck (2011), this crazy cast of characters certainly holds its own.