After cooperating to ride a seesaw, they “shake hands, and shake hands, and shake hands” a total of eight times, cementing their friendship.

Sky-blue Octopus, with a tangle of tentacles, is shaded with pre-digital lavender dots. Blond, cinematic Cowboy wears pressed jeans tucked into fancy boots and a fringed paisley shirt suitable for the rodeo. Their title page, which depicts a pair of scissors beside a sheet of “Western Heroes” paper dolls and an undersea comic book, reveals the origins of Cowboy and Octopus-both are paper cutouts that pose the same way throughout this episodic volume. Actually, my four-year-old just grabbed Cowboy and Octopus off the library shelf at random, and we're glad she did.) unpack a bin of old toys and comics for this characteristically oddball entry. You can buy Cowboy and Octopus at or your local bookstore, or look for it at your local library, which is where we found it. I wondered what could possibly be so funny, and then read the book myself and found out! My husband and the kids apparently do-they read this book before bed last night, and before long all three dissolved into fits of giggling and laughter. It definitely helps to have a dry sense of humor to appreciate the full hilarity of Cowboy and Octopus.

Hallmark-style friendship sentiments give way to laugh-out-loud hilarity, such as when the cowboy cooks his new friend a dinner of his favorite foods-beans with bacon, bacon with beans, and just plain beans with a little bit of bacon (none of which octopus likes), when octopus futilely attempts to tell cowboy a knock-knock joke, or when cowboy feels the need to tell octopus the truth about his new hat. A paper cut-out of a cowboy and an octopus, seemingly sourced from a mid-century clip art piece and a comic book, meet and become friends. Scieszka and Smith are the creative team behind the equally funny and offbeat The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, which my husband brought home one day and has remained a favorite in our house ever since.Ĭowboy and Octopus seems fairly innocuous at first. Our favorite children's book this week is the delightfully twisted Cowboy and Octopus, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (40 pages, Viking Juvenile, 2007). The books aren't necessarily new, but are those that are new to us! If you have a book that you'd like to have us review for the site, please contact us and let us know about it. Since we seem to be reading a lot of books lately, we thought we'd start reviewing a new favorite children's book every week.

Cowboy & Octopus by Jon Scieszka