It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw

Harper & Row, New York. 1947
Hardcover edition, 32 pages, pre-ISBN.

White letters on navy blue pages.

"Sometimes it looked like Spilt Milk. But it wasn't Spilt Milk."

A white splotch. A mystery.

So begins Charles G. Shaw's simple gallery of shapes and suggested answers to an unspoken question. Twenty-five perplexing pages later, he finally reveals the true nature of the milky white object.

 "Sometimes it looked like Spilt Milk. But it wasn't Spilt Milk.
It was just a Cloud in the Sky."

A wonderful thriller for those listening for the first time. In groups, kids who know the conclusion won't be able to keep themselves from yelling it out, so an admonition at the beginning not to spoil the secret for others may help. Before reading each description, it is fun to take guesses as to what a particular blob might look like. Begs for cloud-making craft activity on blue paper, either with white pastels or crayons, or with cotton balls and glue. At home, going outside to find pictures in the clouds is an added bonus.

Incredibly easy to memorize with repetitive text and visual clues, eventually leading to sight reading. Obvious left to right movement of text and page turns.