Click, clack, moo: Cows that type

Cronin, D., & Lewin, B. (2000). Click, clack, moo: Cows that type. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Age Level: 4-8

Genre: Picture Book, Comedy and Humor

This picture book is wonderful for kids of all ages- even I thoroughly enjoyed this laughter filled book.  The book follows the journey of farm animals who want to get their way.  Farmer Brown’s animals use a type writer to write letters to the farmer requesting blankets for the cold weather.  When they don’t get what they want, they decide to go one strike.  Other farm animals join in with requests and also go on strike.    Do the farm animals get what they want? Read this book to see! 

The illustrations are great and capture the attention of the reader.  They are colorful and really depict the nature of a farm.  The setting is realistic, although the book is clearly fictional.  I would absolutely recommend this book because it could be used for many comprehension strategies.  I cannot wait to share it with my students!

Children will find this book relevant as many of them have written letters before.  More importantly, many students have written persuasive letters just as the animals in this text did.  After reading this text, challenge children to write a persuasive letter of their own.

Ideas for teaching/comprehension strategy that can be used with the text:  I feel that is text would be great to compare and contrast two similar texts (could use other Doreen Cronin texts).  I also think this text would be great to identify the author’s purpose.  I also feel that you could introduce children the reasons why we write through this text (see picture for anchor chart idea). 

Questions to pose:

Why do the animals write to the farmer/What is the purpose for writing?

What could the animals do to convince the farmer to give them what they want?

How does this compare to another story you’ve read?

What kind of connections can you make to this story?