The Contests at Cowlick

There's something really special about books that manage to survive childhood. Children can't help but interact with the things they love. Unlike adults, they don't shelve precious items. They won't put them aside and store them - they will love them. Which is it's own form of abuse, especially when said object is a book.

I don't remember when I learned that I would eventually regret scribbling on my book-bound friends' faces or that favorite pages can't be torn out and cuddled, but learn that lesson I finally did. The Contests at Cowlick were spared my most primal form of loving, and now the book is braving another generation of children on our family's bookshelf. I admit, I have reservations about passing on my beloved childhood favorites to my own kids. But at the end of the day, I accept that new copies can (almost) always be found, if the old don't survive. And thank goodness for that, because I love reading The Contests at Cowlick to my kids as much, if not more, than I loved having it read to me.

The premise of the book is simple: a young boy saves his town from a band of vicious bandits through sheer courage and wit. Any story that pits a kid against bandits is bound to be popular. And this one throws in a bunch of fun dialogue, bad grammar, rude words and literal yelping and hollering. My son's eyes widened when he first heard me growl, "Shut up!" from the page, and he laughed out loud when I followed that up with a loud, "Waaaaaeeeeeeeeooooohhh!"

The Contests at Cowlick presents a classic good kid/bad guy story without a moralistic epilogue or complicated world view. It's just plain fun. And that gets a huge A++++ from me. I wasn't able to find many images of the book to post, but someone's grandma was nice enough to have a reading ready to go on YouTube. Awww.