Misery Moo

The latest creation from this prolific and highly successful team features a lugubrious cow whose glass is always half empty, and his friend, an indefatigably chipper lamb whose optimistic nature is gradually undermined by Misery Moo's determination to see the downside of everything. Ross's drawings just seem to get better and better, his ability to describe complex emotions with a few swift strokes of the pen has few equals. When Willis describes Moo's eventual decision to produce '...the biggest, sunniest smile in the whole, wide, wonderful world', Ross gives us a wonderfully pained grin that is all teeth and not supported by the rather anguished eyes. These little laugh-aloud moments are liberally distributed throughout the book, Moo's disconsolate body shape as he sits almost dripping from the branch of a tree and lamb's increasingly desperate grin as he tries to cheer the old girl up. The portrayal of the effect of gravity on Moo's udders as she tries a headstand will surely have the effect of reducing children to tears, as it did this reader. Another winner.