Boo Boo’s Book List: Fred’s Texas Stampede

Some toddlers are drawn to the classics and Boo Boo certainly enjoys his fair share of them, but his current favorite book, Fred’s Texas Stampede, is by a self-published children’s author, Diane Shapley-Box. As someone who aspires to publish something someday I find this to be very heartening.

Boo Boo got this book from his great-Aunt Susan who lives outside Dallas. He has never met Susan, but when he does I’m sure he’d let her know how much he likes this book. 

 

I can obviously explain to you exactly why Game of Thrones is my favorite show. Boo Boo cannot explain why Fred’s Texas Stampede has been his favorite book for the past three weeks, but I have a few hunches.

Here’s the first page:

I mean, come on. There’s three dogs in a big, colorful, Texas-sized illustration. And there’s a cat. They don’t even have names, but it doesn’t matter. They’re there. From the get go there are two out of Boo Boo’s five favorite things and he doesn’t even have to work to find them.  

The three dogs and a cat don’t appear again until the end of the book, but that’s okay. There’s other Boo Boo-approved animals that appear and most of them have rhyming or alliterative names that are easily stamped on the brain. Perdie the Birdie. Tator the Gator. You get the idea.

Fred the Frog his friends all went on what appears to be a weekend getaway to a cattle ranch in Texas where they learned some cowboy skills that come in handy when things go awry; one of the longhorn gets lost during a stampede and the cattle dog needs help finding him! Fred and his crew go all over Texas searching for the longhorn, and get to do some sightseeing in Austin, San Antonio and beyond along the way.

Anyway, since this is a children’s book, all ends well, even for the longhorn, who does not end up as a beef patty. The story is moved along by Shapley-Box’s dexterity with rhyming. One of my favorites includes one of Fred’s lines:

“Several years ago, when we were on our vacation

we met a cattle dog with a stern reputation”

I also think Boo Boo’s drawn to the illustrations not just because they are colorful but also because all the characters have big eyes, kind of the same way many people (minus art critics) are drawn to Margaret Keane’s paintings of big-eyed waif children. Maybe there’s a science to it?

Whatever the reason, this is the book that I end up reading to Boo Boo multiple times a day, after Jer-bear has already read it several times while I am at work. For the past few weeks this is the first book he pulls off the shelf. The book is half as long as he is. Whenever he wants me to read it, which is always, he grabs it, saunters over to where I am, often when I am cooking, and holds it aloft as directly under my face as his almost three-foot self possibly can. All I can see are the book, his little hands, and his toes peeking out from under the cover, like he’s using it shelter himself from the rain.

Most of the time it’s hard to say no.