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Clarabelle: Making Milk and So Much More

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CLARABELLE: MAKING MILK AND SO MUCH MORE; Cris Peterson and David R. Lundquist; Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press, 2007; unpaged. Non-fiction.

Clarabelle is one of 1200 cows who live on the Heer family's Norswiss Farm in Wisconsin. Clarabelle's statistics, multiplied by 12, are mind boggling: she eats 7 tons of feed per year; she gives enough milk each day to juice up 60 bowls of cereal; her manure is used to create electricity, fertilizer, and bedding for her own stall; she weighs as much as a soccer team worth of second graders with a coach or two thrown in; and, she gives birth to replenish the farm's supply of calves. Sam and Josh, two young farm boys, wander through David Lundquist's fine photographs, to give young readers a sense of scale, and Cris Peterson takes care to describe the farm's operations in terms that young city dwellers can understand. Clarabelle is a 2007 Orbis Pictus honor book (for distinguished non-fiction for children).

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2112 said…
An amazing amount of information in this short book. Cows are truly an underrated animal! The great photos make this a very kid friendly informational book.
February 28, 2008 at 7:16 PM
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