Readers will be delighted to learn about the many tasks a cowboy goes through in a day because the illustrations give a colorful portrayal of their livelihood.' -School Library Connection, * '.a fresh, multidimensional glimpse at those who make their home on the range.' -School Library Journal, STARRED review * ' may well persuade readers to trade their ninja outfits for chaps, bandanas, and 10-gallon hats.' -Publishers Weekly, STARRED review 'An eloquent response to anyone with a simplistic picture of the cowboy as a rough, tough working man and nothing else.' -Kirkus 'The illustrations are vibrant, somewhat abstract, and reminiscent of a vintage children's book. (Oct.School Library Journal's Fuse#8 Best of 2016 * '.a fresh, multidimensional glimpse at those who make their home on the range.' -School Library Journal, STARRED review * ' may well persuade readers to trade their ninja outfits for chaps, bandanas, and 10-gallon hats.' -Publishers Weekly, STARRED review '.a lovely, quiet book about the personality traits that come in handy when the going gets tough.' -Booklist 'An eloquent response to anyone with a simplistic picture of the cowboy as a rough, tough working man and nothing else.' -Kirkus 'Young cowpokes will appreciate the seriousness given to their passion.' -Horn Book 'The illustrations are vibrant, somewhat abstract, and reminiscent of a vintage children's book. Illustrator’s agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. It may well persuade readers to trade their ninja outfits for chaps, bandanas, and 10-gallon hats. Working in layers of stenciled four-color imagery, he portrays steers mottled like fine marble, the blinding fury of a dust storm, and an endless night sky of sparkling stars. And sometimes they just listen to the big wide world and its grass song.” Bean ( This Is My Home, This Is My School) beautifully echoes the allusive, musical quality of the text while nodding to the archetypes of the Old West. Sometimes they listen for trucks, and wolves, and rushing water. “They’re always listening to their trail boss and to the other cowhands. “Real cowboys are good listeners,” she writes in one such passage. Hoefler’s text seamlessly blends the workaday with a sense of wonder.

Writing in prose with the lilt and plainspoken poetry of a classic cowboy song, debut author Hoefler makes a winning case that those who are home on the range are self-aware, empathic, conscientious, “as many different colors as the earth,” and include “girls, too.”

Real cowboys by kate hoefler