If I Were a Sheep

If I Were a Sheep

A "touch and feel" book by Anne Wilkinson

Let's begin by defining the genre of "touch and feel." This is not an overly emotional and sappy story of a sheep who helps old ladies cross the street or stops bullies from picking on the uncool kids at school. The "touch and feel" part refers to the various pieces of carpet fuzz, construction paper bits, and corduroy fabric scraps that are rudimentarily pasted throughout the illustrations. This apparently allows for your child to have a "broader experience" when enjoying the aforementioned whimsical imaginings of just what life would be like if you were an intellectually challenged ovine.

On to the review:

Wilkinson clearly has her work "cut out" (bahahaha - a "touch and feel" pun!) for her in this one as she begins the story with an open ended phrase followed by ellipses - "If I were a sheep..." 

Again, much like Laura Numeroff did with "If you give a mouse a cookie..." our imaginations are left to run wild with the innumerable adventurous paths that this story could take. For me personally, my first thought was "Man. That would really suck. Aren't sheep like the dumbest animals on the planet?" Also I thought about the few times that I had actually been around the creatures - their horrific odor was probably the most memorable thing from my limited experience. Additionally, on the front of the book, we have our first tactile element. At the top of the picture of the sheep's face (see picture above) there is a cloud-shaped piece of low-grade berber carpet which can only be assumed to represent an exposed portion of the sheep's poorly developed brain, or a cute woolly bowl cut. 

As you turn the page, you will find a center-fold of a rather voluptuous sheep who appears to be "putting out the vibe" similar to this:

 At the top of the page is scribbled a disappointingly predictable answer to the initial open-ended phrase from Wilkinson, which reads "My coat would be woolly." Um. Duh. Sheep are woolly. That's pretty much their thing. Here we also have our second tactile element which is an even lower grade and again cloud-shaped piece of berber carpet, crudely pasted on the sheep's hindquarters. This is inaccurate on two accounts. A) I don't think a sheep's nether-regions are woolly. B) If they are, there are bound to be some brown poop stains, of which I see none!

The next page is easily my favorite in the whole book. As we flip the berber-covered sheep's butt over, we are confronted by another ovine center-fold, although this one is slightly less voluptuous and appears to be an elderly sheep. At the bottom is written "My knees would be knobbly..." No, that is not a misprint. I had the same thought. "WTF is 'knobbly?!'" Did she mean "Knobby?" "Wobbly?" You can't just combine those two. Wilkinson is clearly drunk. Either that, or she is an agnostic and believes God is dead, so we can just do whatever the heck we want. For the tactile element here, there are included over the knee areas of the sheep, four circles of some towel-like material which I am sure would be described any blind, old sage as the perfect example of "knobbly." 

As the page turns, there is an alarmingly turkey-like sheep with the face at the center of the two adjacent pages. At the top of the illustration is written "My ears would be velvety..." Here, I must give credit to Wilkinson for the consistency of the tactile element. The ears of the turkey-sheep are in fact made of a "velvety" material. The only problem with this is that I have felt a real sheep's ears, and they are definitely not velvety. I can think of a plethora of WAY more appropriate adjectives. Smelly. Crusty. Disgusting. Gunky. Disease-Ridden. Purulent. ALL of these would be a more apt description to use here. 

On to the next page. Here we find another sheep center-fold that looks a lot like Jay Leno. 

In the top right corner the phrase "My nose would be wrinkly..." is squeezed in. Again, not the adjectives I would use to describe a sheep's nose, or pretty much any nose ever. Snotty. Goopy. Sticky. Icky. Booger-infested. Take your pick. If you asked a thousand people to describe a sheep's nose in one word, I would be flabbergasted if even one of them chose "wrinkly." The tactile aspect of this page is adequate, with a piece of corduroy fabric displayed where Jay Leno's nose, er, I mean the sheep's nose, should be. 

On to the grand finale. The final illustration. The final description of what life would be like if I were, in fact, a sheep. On this page we see what appears to be a moon of some sort, covered with 8 sheep. 7 along the perimeter, and one large sheep taking up most of the lunar surface. There are also several shiny stars and a disco-ball looking moon thingy above the sheep-covered moon. The concluding phrase that Wilkinson leaves us with is "If I were a sheep, and I couldn't get to sleep. I would lie on the hill, and count sheep!" Um. False. I see what the author was trying to do here by tying in a cutesy bedtime tradition to life as a dumb farm animal, but it seems way too forced. It doesn't match up with the anatomic themes and descriptions from the previous few pages. In addition to this. Sheep definitely cannot count. I think most people, including most kids, are aware of this. It seems as if Wilkinson has had a crisis of genre while writing this book. She starts out as descriptive, historical "touch and feel" and finishes as fantastical "touch and feel" fiction. What gives? 

Anyways. Here is how the book was rated by me and my son Beck. 

Beck gives this book 6/10 "dahs." He loves the tactile portions of the story, and the inaccuracies don't seem to bother him very much. The reason it didn't receive more "dahs" is because he was aware of how dumb the writing was even at 6 months of age. 

I give this book a 2/10 on my personal rating scale because I don't much care for the tactile portions of the book, especially because of their inaccuracies, and I definitely would rank the writing right up there with some of the dumbest children's books that I have ever read. 

Give the aforementioned ratings, this book gets an overall score of 4/10. Not too horrible considering the harsh review. 

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next time as Beck and I review The Toolbox by Anne & Harlow Rockwell. 

Sincerely,

Gib and Beck