100 Goats and Granny!

Keeping track of Granny’s many, many goats is a group of local children’s favorite pastime—though the incorrigible animals make it no easy feat. In rollicking, rhythmic prose, Atinuke (L Is for Love) gleefully tots up the goats by groups of 10, while recounting their mischief making, which ranges from interrupting Granny’s phone calls to eating the aunties’ panties right off the clothesline (“Once, the brown one stayed on the bus,/ beeping on the/ driver’s horn!/ Then the gray stayed/ at the salon,/ and came out/ completely shorn!”). But when little goat 100 wanders into town, leaving havoc in its wake, Granny displays a fierce, unconditional love, admonishing a gathered crowd: “You scared my goat. You scared my goat.// You and you and you and you! You scared my goat!” Then life resets, though the final page reveals that Granny might be orchestrating some mischief herself. Hinds, making her picture book debut, employs naif-style gouache, colored pencil, and pen illustrations to immerse readers in the bustle of a verdant, tight-knit neighborhood and its abiding affection for an indomitable matriarch. Human characters are portrayed with brown skin. Ages 3–7. (May)