In many ways Doreen Cronin’s Click, Clack, Moo is a culminating moment for illustrated cows. It situates them as active protagonists; They are laborers that manipulate writing tools to negotiate with a farm’s management system. The book functions as a primer for lessons about labor relations, socialism and economics, though it gains its symbolic currency through political references that are beyond the child’s scope. Kimbery Jack’s article “Trouble in the Farm Yard: Labor Relations and Politics in Doreen Cronin’s Duck Books” argues that the impressive panoply of historical and political references in Doreen Cronin’s books “ ‘exploit the ignorance’ of the implied child audience and function as covert jokes directed exclusively at the adult audience” (Jack 422). Various publications and organizations, including the Illinois Farm Bureau, The California Federal of Teachers, and Canada’s Labour Studies Bulletin recommend Cronin’s books as good introductions to farm life, agriculture, economics and labor relations (Jack 411). Jack acknowledges and privileges the “different register” with which the adult reader approaches Cronin’s text (Jack 421). For Jack, the fact that the adult reader understands the political references makes her reading more nuanced, rich, and controlled. It is the precise nature of childhood ignorance, however, that needs to be explored. Unlike the learned adult, the child reader (or listener) approaches these political references without their sedimented historical meaning and simultaneously approaches the animal symbols without referents.
In her essay, “The Animal Voice Behind the Animal Fable,” Naama Harel argues against reading the animals in such children’s books as “absent referents” or metaphors that do not point to any authentic behavior. While many aspects of the animal protagonist in a fable can be mapped onto human experience, Harel argues that there is a “differential gap” that prevents us from completely reducing the nonhuman condition to the human condition. This gap contains those surplus spaces that construct the animal beyond its mere function as a trope. The adult reader loses (or excludes) certain features in the transition of the animal protagonist to its interpretation as allegory. The insistence on an allegorical reading represses the more subtle ways in which animal subjects are displayed to children.
If we extract the political undertones of Click, Clack, Moo the story reads as a tale of a troubled farmer dealing with animals that are too smart for the farm. The story opens with Farmer Brown’s face and he emerges as our protagonist that “has a problem. His cows like to type” (Cronin 1). We hear the sounds of the typing and clicking echoed in the phrase Farmer Brown overhears: “Click, clack, moo. / Click, clack, moo. / Clickety, clack, moo” (Cronin 2)
The repetition of the onomatopoetic phrase click, clack, moo combines the sounds of the cow with the sounds of the typewriter, blending the antiquated image of the cow with an antiquated writing device. The title and plot of the story rearticulate the mechanistic view of cows by linking the robotic responses of the typewriter with the sounds of the cow. Indeed, the story repeatedly formulates the cows as machines. The moment the cows go on strike, they leave a note to Farmer Brown saying, “Sorry. / We’re closed. / No milk / today” (Cronin 8). The phrasing suggests that the cows, and not the barn, are contained factories or stores that open and close. It is not that the cows provide labor to the farmer. They are the very machines that produce raw goods. When the farmer rejects the cows’ request for blankets, he leaves them a note: “There will be no electric blankets. / You are cows and hens. / I demand milk and eggs” (Cronin 17). This statement makes a dual argument about the absurdity of cows desiring the luxury of warm blankets and the inherent feature of cows and hens to produce milk and eggs. Although Cronin groups hens in the category with cows, she does not make the essentialist argument for birds and eggs as strong as the association between cows and milk. Cronin’s use of the feminine noun hens shows dissociation between the entire species and egg laying. Conversely, the cows are not separated by gender, showing that milk production is an essential feature of their species.
In her insistence on a symbolic reading of Click, Clack, Moo, the adult reader may collapse the figures of cows onto labor workers entirely. This reading would disregard the precise way the animal subjects are portrayed to children. Although the book may teach children about social reform processes and farm life, it makes more prominent and urgent arguments about animal behavior. To the early child readers who have not yet built strong associations with cow symbols, the book works to unquestioningly regard them as milk producers. Learning to read (that is, to read as Jack’s anticipated adult reader) is about learning to re-read these symbols without the first associations.
