Pete the Sheep-Sheep
Kindergarten-Grade 2–All the sheep shearers at Shaggy Gully have sheep dogs with names like Brute, Tiny, and Fang. A new shearer, Shaun, arrives with a sheep-sheep named Pete, who rounds up the animals with polite requests and compliments. Soon the sheep will only respond to Pete, and allow only Shaun to shear them. When the other shearers insist that they must go, Shaun opens a salon in town, styling the sheep's wool in innovative ways. When Brute, Tiny, and Fang desert their owners to have their fur styled, the other shearers finally join the salon and spend their time styling animals of all shapes and sizes. The creators of Diary of a Wombat (Clarion, 2003) have produced a bit of harmless, silly fluff that, while mildly amusing, is hardly likely to inspire rereading. Whatley's watercolor-and-colored-pencil illustrations are clean and crisp and work nicely with the text, but there is simply not much substance here.–Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.