STANLEY GOES FOR A DRIVE

When Stanley goes for a drive in his old red pickup on a dried-out, brown-as-dirt summer day, he’s not thinking about much. Until, that is, he spies a black-and-white spotted cow on the side of the road. He milks the cow, and, magically, the milk from his buckets floats up and materializes as white clouds in the sky, taking the same shapes as the cow’s spots. The clouds start to pour (rain, not milk) and the palette of the landscape turns from brown to green. Frazier, a renowned graphic artist, tells his story with color and shape; in a sense, the story is about the perception of color and shape. The appealing, crisp computer graphics (the art is hand-drawn and colored on a computer) also evoke old-fashioned silhouette art, and a variety of offbeat perspectives force readers to focus on details they might normally overlook. Reading this unusual, visually intriguing story is like examining a surrealist painting where something shifts inexplicably as one watches. Children may never view a spotted cow the same way again. (Picture book. 4-8)