By Doreen Cronin
The cows find a typewriter, and by the end of the week the entire farm is out on strike.
Farmer Brown's cows find an old typewriter in the barn and start typing him letters. The barn is cold at night and they would like electric blankets. He says absolutely not. So the cows stop giving milk. The hens hear about it and stop laying eggs. Notes go back and forth under the barn door all week, Duck gets appointed neutral party in the negotiations, and Farmer Brown slowly works out that he has far less leverage than he thought. Betsy Lewin's loose, splashy animals do most of the deadpan.
It's the funniest book on this shelf and the one a slightly older farm-mad child will pick up first, because the animals here have opinions. It's also, quietly, the one book here that lets on why the farm exists at all. The whole plot runs on milk and eggs, and the cows' leverage is that people want them. Nothing dies and nobody goes to market, so the fact just sits there for your child to notice or not. If they ask why Farmer Brown needs the milk so badly, that's the door opening, and it's yours to walk through whenever you're ready.