I Want to Be a Cowgirl

Oh, give her a home where the buffalo roam... In this playful ode to the Wild West, a small girl would gladly exchange her big city life for big sky country. Her three-piece-suited daddy seems bemused by her longings, patiently trying to reclaim his converted hat and the white shag rug (with a suspicious chaps-shaped hole cut out of it). But "I don't want to be a girly girl / Who likes to sit and chat. / I just want to be a cowgirl, Daddy, / What's so wrong with that?"

As our heroine gallops through her urban landscape, the clouds reflect her fantasies: 10-gallon hats, cattle, cacti, and wagons. A stray dog becomes her piebald mare and two bananas are her six-shooters (her pet dog plays along in the holdup, paws held high under the ironing board where Daddy placidly irons his hat). Popular and talented author-illustrator team Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross salute big dreams in the warm, funny I Want to Be a Cowgirl. (Ages 4 to 8) --Emilie Coulter