THE LITTLE COWBOY
by Margaret Wise Brown
The opinion here is unanimous — we don't like this book! Any part of it, — text by the gifted and industrious Margaret Wise Brown, and pictures by Esphyr Slobodkina. Contrapuntal treatment of a routine big and little pattern — Big Cowboy and Little Cowboy, big boots, little boots, big hat, little hat, big pony, little pony, big cows, little cows and so on. Somehow this theme is wearing thin, and the handling in this book suggests a thoroughly adult concept in plays on words, and so on, with little to appeal to the picture story age the format suggests. The pictures, in solid block two color and coarse screen background, have a sophistication that will appeal to few children. And I still don't like faceless human figures.