Javelinas and another Cowboy

Do you remember my post about The Gingerbread Cowboy?  I wrote that the gingerbread cowboy was chased by javelinas and noted that I had never heard of javelinas before.  Well, now my children and I are quite familiar with these interesting creatures.  Javelinas are relatives of swine, but not true pigs, and they are also related to the hippopotamus.  They are very bristly (as the author notes, "very hairy on the chinny-chin-chin").  Before I knew better (thanks Karen), I was calling them javelinas with an English "j" sound at the beginning, but obviously the word is Spanish so the initial sound is "h".

This week we read, The Three Little Javelinas by Susan Lowell.  This book is a southwestern version of The Three Little Pigs. The setting for this story is actually the vicinity of the Tohono O'Odham Reservation near Tucson, Arizona, but the author notes that the setting could really be almost any dry southwestern area where javelinas, coyotes, tumbleweeds, cacti, and adobe houses are found - which includes parts of Texas. 

We also enjoyed Bubba, The Cowboy Prince, A Fractured Texas Tale by Helen Ketteman.  This book is a parody of  Cinderella and is set in Texas.  The fairy godmother is a cow, and the hero, named Bubba, is the stepson of a wicked rancher.  He wants to go to the ball to dance with Miz Lurleen, but he smells like cattle and has nothing to wear.  You can just imagine what happens next.  My favorite line from the book is said by Miz Lurleen, "There goes another ten-dollar Stetson on a five-cent head."  How funny is that?  Does anyone really say that in Texas?  I hope so.  This book is a fun read, the illustrations are great, and I tried my best to read it with a Texas accent - ha, now that is hysterical! 

I really enjoy reading different versions of fairy tales.

The Gingerbread Cowboy

The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires is a wild western version of the classic tale.  A rancher's wife is tired of baking biscuits and decides to make a gingerbread cowboy instead.  When the rancher peeks in the oven, the gingerbread cowboy takes off running.  Instead of the usual cast of characters, he encounters a horned lizard, a roadrunner, a band of javelinas (not sure what these are??, I have to google them), long-horned cattle, and a coyote.  The book is a fun read.  I love all the different versions of The Gingerbread Man.

I thought about making cowboys out of real gingerbread, but we opted for the paper version instead.  I drew the outline of the gingerbread cowboys, and C and R filled in the details.

Here is C's gingerbread cowboy.  He didn't want to cut it out because he drew some details around the cowboy.  His details are all things that the rancher's wife used to make the cowboy.

R wanted her gingerbread cowboy cut out, and here it is:

We made some silly cowboy hats too!  The hats are just card stock cut in the shape of a cowboy hat with a paper bag band stapled around the back.

These silly hats made us laugh for quite a while!  Some cowboy fun is a great way to begin learning about the state of Texas.