Lots of puns and good rhyming

I have not been the same since learning about the poop deck as a child

Parents, Pre-K through 1st grade teachers, and librarians, this review is for YOU. If you don't have SAILOR MOO: COW AT SEA in your collection, the young children in your life are missing out big time.

This book was love at first sight for me. Or I should say, love at first listen. I was at a writer’s conference maybe seven or so years ago when I heard the author, Lisa Wheeler, read this book aloud. Perhaps my response to it had something to do with my fondness for cows when I was a child. In fact, my dad still says “Look, Mamy, COW!” whenever he’s with me and we happen to pass a pasture. But really, I hadn’t realized just how much I still loved cows until I heard Lisa Wheeler tell me the story of Sailor Moo.

This book is so charming and humorous that the author could have been selling a full farm that day and I would’ve been first in line for it. And the funny thing is, I’m not much of a “rhyming” picture book person; they often feel forced and cheesy to me. But this book . . . well, I’ll refer back to the Amazon product description for an example: "Moo loved the way the ocean sang. / 'Like moo-sic,' she would utter, / as rocking, rolling ocean waves / would churn her milk to butter."

And it goes on and on, clever page after clever page. I love all of Lisa Wheeler’s books because her rhymes make perfect sense and read in a linear fashion, rather than the way so many other picture books twist the sentences to force a rhyme.

I’ve read this book several times to my daughters’ classrooms, and without fail, I’ve been asked by the kids to read it again. And they’re always more than willing to say the refrain with me in pirate talk: “Yo Ho Ho, and a shiver-me-be!”

Because, you know, the pirate cows obviously need to talk like Blackbeard. And don’t forget to talk like the fishing boat captain, either: the hissing Captain Silver Claw.

This is my all-time favorite read aloud! Hope you’ll give it a try!

Why do I love this book so much? Perhaps it's the clever rhymes and the sea-chantey tempo, which is just what was needed for a book about a cow at sea. Without the tempo, it's just a silly book. With the tempo, it's an epic of the waves! Sailor Moo, a young cow, finds a berth with some cats, earning her way by giving them milk. (Which...would make her a mother, but let's ignore that.) Then she hooks up with a team of actual sailing cows! Including their very handsome red bull captain. But the cows hide a nefarious secret. When Sailor Moo discovers the true nature of the ship and crew, she takes a stand, and makes the captain rethink his own life.

I can not tell you how many times I've typed "Sailor Moon," by the way.

This is a pretty universally appealing book, though, of course, kids who like pirates or cows are going to be particularly drawn in. I'd recommend this for library storytimes, for certain! You could start a good call-and-response for the chantey sections, really drawing your kids in. This is also a good pick for a picture book gift, so long as you're willing to help the parents out by reading this after they've had to do so for about the hundredth time!

I'm such a sucker for rhyming picture books! This is a fun book to read and so creative.

Jan 29, 2021 We read this again before bed ❤️

Little Moo unlike the other cows was not content, she longed to sail the seven seas. So she followed her dream, and became the ship's cook on a crew composed of cats, but when she was tossed overboard by a storm, and rescued by a Bovine filled pirate ship, and found herself in disbelief, until the tides were turned in her favor.

So so cute and clever, and illustrations beautifully done.

Cute cow love story with great illustrations and fun rhymes. Funny dairy puns/jokes.

Moo the cow watches the undulating wheat as wishes it was the sea, and the ocean swells.
She dons a sailor cap and hooves it to the bay in hopes of finding a ship. She somehow ends up on ship captained by a Tom Cat and offers to pay her way by providing fresh milk everyday.
The cats ignore her so she befrinds the ocean life especially the sea cows. when a storm picks up and Moo ends up thrown overboard she is rescued by her sea cow friends who transport he to the nearest ship. The Captain , a handsome Red Angus cow, is everything she is looking for untill she finds out that this is a pirate ship... what will Moo do? will "bovine love" conquer all? Moo knew, will you?
With lovely illustrations that ceratinly glorify the cow... this book is a charmer.

Very cute. This is the story of a cow who wants to go to sea. The first crew she joins is made up of cats. She becomes the ship's cook and befriends some manatees, the cows of the sea. During a storm, Moo ends up being thrown overboard, and her manatee cousins help her to another ship run by Captain Angus... who isn't exactly what she expects.

The pictures are beautifully done, and the story is rather clever. I enjoyed the "yo-ho ho and a shiver-me-be" refrains that end each section of the story. Over all, a very sweet picture book.

Really cute story with some great rhymes. Very engaging and would be great to use in a classroom.

I enjoyed this book at first: The illustrations are nice; the rhyming text is fun; and a cow going off to sea is, yes, very a-moo-sing. But the ending. It could not be any more anti-climatic. Why, why, why can the happy ending not be that Sailor Moo has gone off to sea? Why, why, why must she abandon her dreams to settle down as a housewife while trying to change a man who is so clearly up to no good? Why? It's so disappointing.

The central message presented by this book is that, for women, dreams are just fluff and such before finally settling down to get married and have babies, as all good women should; and it also conveys the message that women *should* fall in love with and nurture "bad men." These are hardly the great kind of messages I want to be giving my daughter during our time together. I found myself getting halfway through this book, slamming it shut, and proclaiming, "And she lived happily ever after at sea. The end!"

We won't bother with this one again.