Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.Įmotional storm clouds come between two unicorn friends. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway-the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty. Sam is depicted as a bespectacled, dark-skinned girl with long, brown hair and wearing plaid flannel.īrisk and bright, if a tad one-dimensional. VanSickle delivers lean, bouncy verse and an impressive array of offbeat creatures, while Atkinson's illustrations are bold and hint at dynamic motion.

Sam looks at her hamster again, staring at her with big bright eyes, cute tiny feet, and a furry belly. Mermaids brush their hair all day, fairies play too many tricks, kelpies are hard to catch. A kirin needs acres of grass, a jackalope requires “sturdy reins for bumpy, jumpy rides.” If Sam had a dragon, she'd probably need a fire extinguisher, and a manticore would require intensive dental care. A pet sasquatch could be fun (except for combing out its snarled fur), or what about flying on the back of a gryphon? If she had a kraken, she could go on deep-sea dives. Why can't she have a unicorn? They'd “prance through fields of posies,” and she could 'shine her horn with candy corn.' Or what about a hippogriff? He might scare the dogs in the dog park. He mostly sleeps and eats, she notes, 'and gets his shavings wet.' She is far from impressed. Sam, who wears big square glasses and a serious expression, just got a hamster, her first pet. An imaginative little girl dreams of an exotic pet.

If I Had a Gryphon by Vikki VanSickle