Cowboys

In a companion to Harrison and Burr’s Pirates (2008), first-person poems from the perspectives of several cowboys create a candid portrait of life out west, following a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail. Harrison’s work includes traveling songs with a lullaby lilt (“One thousand miles/ of burnin’ sun,/ swollen rivers,/ stampedes, wolves/ three thousand cows,/ fifteen men,/ one thousand miles to go”) and upbeat poems in peppery dialect: “Ha!/ My granny’s quicker’n you/ and she’s eighty!/ Reckon that grizz’d/ be pickin’ his teeth by now.” Burr’s dramatically lit, realistic digital artwork nails the determined expressions of hard-working cowboys while creating a character in the sweeping prairie landscape. Readers who long to ride and wrangle should be entranced. Ages 7–9. (Apr.)