The Circle-O Roundup

The Circle-O Roundup is the first in Ed Parrish's series of illustrated tall-tale books of rhyme about a tough ol' saddle-burr of a cowpoke named Curly and his trusty mare, Daisy, who live "out there on the Circle-O." Its 24 pages include six favorite, high-energy poems with 17 original illustrations: The ejection saddle is a humorous misadventure, in which a crate containing an Air Force ejection seat arrives by mistake on the shack's front porch. Curly decides this high-tech contraption is just the thing for a brilliant invention, which doesn't work exactly the way he planned. The saddle-broke grizzly is another humorous near catastrophe about what happens when Curly raises an orphaned grizzly cub and puts it to work-and then gets careless. In Curly's five hunnert-dollar supper, Curly helps an old magician with a past. This one will pluck at your heartstrings. In Space wranglin', Curly and Daisy help NASA get things back under control when a herd of Texas Longhorns stampedes the International Space Station. The traffic light shows up by surprise at an isolated dirt-road intersection out there on the Circle-O and causes more trouble than it's worth. And in Punny mare,the autumnal equinox is just the opportunity Daisy needs to show off her horse-sense of humor.

Ed Parrish writes Directions, a corporate magazine for the Cessna Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas.