Melvyn Grant

Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch always returns home at 6 o'clock to read his son Young Sam's favorite book, Where's My Cow? This book-within-a-book is a bit like the "That's Not My..." board book series. Sam does all the animal impressions, delighting his son, but the logic of the book begins to annoy him ("If you lose your cow you should report this to the Watch under the Domestic & Farmyard Animals (Lost) Act of 1809..."), so he begins to invent his own stories set in the city where show more they live instead of the farm ("It goes, 'Haaaak! Gack! Ptui!' It is Coffin' Henry!") This leads to such hilarity that Lady Sybil (Sam's wife and Young Sam's mother) comes to investigate ("You're not getting him over-excited, are you, dear?")

The illustrations only ratchet up the uncanny valley effect: hyper-realistic elements for the "real" characters and simple pastel colors and linework for the book-within-a-book flow together without borders; there's a dragon lurking on many pages.

See also: Inside the Slidy Diner show less

There’s a large part of me that feels like I shouldn’t be reviewing this or counting it towards my “read in 2018″ total. After all, it’s a picture book and one I basically “read” on the Mark Reads Youtube channel, so I didn’t even get the full benefit of the illustrations. But I’ve counted the other “first time on Mark Reads” books so in full honesty….

This was a very charming story and a nice bit of metafiction, though I was expecting it to be the story read in Thud! show more and nothing more. It was fun seeing Vimes and Sybil and the other Discworld characters, and getting another peek into Vimes’ family time was lovely, but I feel like non-Discworld fans would get less enjoyment out of it because the emotional connection with the characters isn’t there. I’m honestly not sure if this would be the childhood favourite Where’s My Cow? is in canon.

As for writing quality itself, it’s fun. Very much a children’s book. Not that great of a read-aloud as far as I can tell, or at least, I’ve seen better. The metafictional bits lend themselves nicely to multiple voices and general parental silliness, but they also don’t stretch themselves outside a fairly narrow range. Again, I think this is because it’s written for Disc fans more than it is for kids.

What I’ve seen the pictures look great, though, and intricate enough to entertain fans and parents on rereads as they notice things they missed before.

Warnings: Errant livestock.

5/10 show less

This is to accompany Thud! and in it's own right is a wonderfully funny, almost children's tale as told by Vimes to his child. It starts off as a story about someone who had lost his cow, half way through vimes thinks "why is young Sam's nursery full of farmyard animals anyway? Why are his books full of moo-cows and baa-lambs? He's growing up in a city. He will only seem them on a plate! They go sizzle!
"I can think of a more useful book. A book with streets in it, not fields. A book about show more the place where he'll grow up."
And then several staple characters show up.
I laughed until I nearly cried.
The illustrations are wonderful and quite apt. show less

"Where's My Cow" is central to the plot of Thud - it must be read to young Sam every day at six o'clock sharp, because some things are just THAT important. Fun to see the most memorable characters of Ankh-Morpork depicted, as well as Vimes making faces. The message, however, is that if you lost your cow, you probably don't live in Ankh-Morpork, and that if you mistake a sheep for a cow, you do.