Billy and Goat at the State Fair
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Two best friends visit the state fair in this tale of courage and corn dogs!
Billy and Goat are best friends, but they have different styles. Billy likes to smell the roses—Goat likes to eat them! So it’s no surprise that they have different ideas of how to enjoy the state fair.
For Billy, the crowds and the noise are pretty intimidating. He’s happy to wait in the livestock pens until the best-goat contest begins. But Goat’s not one to sit when he could run. Faster than you can say butter sculpture, Goat’s out of the pen and leading Billy on a merry chase past rides, games, contests, and exhibits. When Billy finally catches up to him—on the biggest float of the parade!—he’s relieved, but also amazed. The fair is awesome! They may have missed Goat’s chance to win best in show, but for Billy it’s never been more clear—his best friend is the best goat ever!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
How can best friends be so different? Billy, a farm boy, is methodical and mild-mannered; Goat, a goat, is boisterous and a little impulsive. As Yaccarino (Doug Unplugged) writes, "Billy liked reading adventure stories, but Goat was always looking for real-life adventures." Their relationship works just fine until they decide to enter the "best goat" competition at the State Fair. Could this be the opportunity for Goat to learn to curb his enthusiasm, while Billy loosens up a bit? Yaccarino doesn't push his life lessons too hard, and his brightly colored, boldly graphic pictures are well suited to capturing the excitement and, in Billy's case, sensory overload of a big, sprawling event (he uses a dotted line to trace their path past rides and games to reach the livestock tent). But while there are many sharp-looking vignettes (Billy spends the middle of the book chasing after Goat, who always manages to be wherever the boy isn't looking), the characters' personalities aren't vivid enough to make up for a perfunctory story about mismatched but well-matched friends. Ages 3 7
