It's Milking Time
Alsdurf grew up on a dairy farm in southern Minnesota and it shows. Every note of this gentle, yet never patronizing, story of how milk is retrieved from cows is authentic, and it’s exactly these specifics that will be eye-opening to young readers: how the stanchions are lowered to keep the cows in place, how the teats are washed, how the milkers are attached with leather straps, and so forth. The story follows a little girl helping her father with the daily milking chores, a task of comforting repetition. Throughout, she repeats the same phrase: “Every morning, every night, it’s milking time.” Just as fine as the detailed descriptions is Alsdurf’s way of conjuring the slow, quiet texture of farm life: “The air is hot, heavy. Overhead a fan whirs. Tails swishing, the cows chomp and chew their cud.” Johnson and Fancher’s dusty watercolors lend the grit of a family farm a halcyon hue and match Alsdurf’s realism at every step. A nicely understated glimpse at a life fewer and fewer kids are likely to see. Grades K-2. --Daniel Kraus