MY LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN

A solitary shepherdess in the Alps tends her herd of goats.

Brand’s flat, modern style has a cartoonish flair akin to that of Byron Barton, with thick, black outlines and bold colors. First-person text translated from French matches the visual narrative’s simplicity and offers straightforward narration detailing how the light-skinned protagonist cares for her animals and turns their milk into cheese to sell in a nearby village. Accompanied by her dog, she goes into the mountains early in the morning to bring the goats to the milking barn, where she collects 38 pints, enough, with the prior day’s milk, to make a wheel of cheese. Slapstick humor aids the storytelling when the wheel rolls away (“Boing!”), but the intrepid shepherdess catches it, then cleans it and brings it to a shop. Subsequent scenes show her engaged in various tasks necessary to keep her farm running—hauling hay, cutting wood, bottle-feeding a kid. She then prepares for bed before waking to start over again the next day. In the robust backmatter, Brand shares more about herding, first with a Q&A with the narrator (now identified as “Flavie”) and then with expository text about alpine herds, milk and milk products, other herding animals, and structures people use for shelter when they’re herding animals.

Informative and downright wholesome.