The Cows, the Farmer and the Typewriter.
October 6, 2010
The cooperating librarian for my practicum read Click, clack, moo : cows that type (Book, 2000) [WorldCat.org] to a kindergarten class today. In which, cows get control of a type-writer and begin to type out demands to their farmer, going so far as to withhold their milk and incite the hens to go on strike.
Spoiler warnings, the cows end up trading the typewriter away in order to gain their meager demands, just wanting some electric blankets to keep warm in the cold barn.
The typewriter ends up in the hands of the ducks (who were the go-betweens during the cow-farmer industrial labor relations) who demand a diving board be put in the pond. The last picture is of the ducks, diving off of the board into the pond.
Its an adorable book.
After he was done reading, I asked the class, “Did the cows make a good trade with the farmer? Was it a smart trade?”
Hands shot up.
“No, because sometime when you trade something, like a Pokemon card, you get a good card but the person you traded with is sad because they lost a good card and so they cry and want their card back and you aren’t allowed to trade in school.”
“It was a fair trade. The cows got their blankets and the farmer got his typewriter.”
“No, because they didn’t get what they wanted.”
“But, they wanted blankets and they got blankets.”
“Oh, then maybe.”
Yeah, I wanted them to tell me that the cows made a mistake trading away their only communication and negotiation tool, that when the blankets broke or other issues came up, they would have no leverage and at best would have to go to the ducks as typewriting go-betweens.
As it was, I learned something and they enjoyed the story enough to have intense opinions about the fairness of the farmer-to-cow trade.
It was a good day.
