Myron's Magic Cow

Myron lives in an apartment block with his impatient mother amongst the humble streets of what looks like a New York suburb. One day, on the way to the store to buy some milk, he is accosted by Goldilocks. She sells him an immense cow, purchased from a ‘dopey boy’ named Jack for a pack of beans, that she can’t fit into her car alongside her three bears. The rest of the story in this 40-page picture book describes the mildly amusing consequences.

The infiltration of reality by intertextually shuffled fairy-folk is common enough, and I wish the author had played the theme as ambitiously as the illustrator, whose depiction of Myron plodding along the sidewalk with a cow bigger than an elephant promises great things. I found the pace of the denouement equally pedestrian, but younger readers will be intrigued by the monstrous scale of Myron’s predicament, and by the potential of yet another fantasy icon introduced on the final page.