YOUNG MACDONALD

A young vivisectionist recombines the livestock in this “Old MacDonald” outtake. To verses constructed along familiar lines, the lab-coated farm lad in Milgrim’s lighthearted cartoons cobbles together a device from found junk that painlessly puts a pig’s head atop a horse’s body to make a “Hig,” then produces feathered “Deese,” that call out “Hee-Honk,” a woolly “Shicken” (“Baak-Baa”) and so on in quick succession. An accident while stepping onto the machine with a dog gives the budding Doctor Moreau a taste of his own medicine (“with an Oops-Arf here / And an Oops-Arf there”), but he manages to restore the natural order just as his parents come back carrying pizza for all. He’s last seen tucked into bed with a book on cloning. Milgrim’s portmanteau creations aren’t as creatively mixed as those in Jack Prelutsky’s Scranimals (2002, illustrated by Peter Sís) or Kenyon Cox’s Mixed Beasts (2005, illustrated by Wallace Edwards), but younger audiences will enjoy this playful (and topical) rendition of the sing-along favorite. (Picture book. 6-8)