Beautiful watercolor illustrations show Charlotte the sheep as she bounds over rivers, through forests and up tall cliffs while her fellow sheep graze peacefully and shake their heads at her. In the end, her adventurousness pays off as she is able to get help for her aging and injured shepherd. A nice story, short enough for storytime but long enough to want to use early on. ( )

Charlotte is a little sheep who isn't like the rest of the sheep. She does things that a normal sheep wouldn't do; she climbs trees and jumps in rivers. One day, her Shepard fell and broke his leg. the sheepdog, Jack, didn't go get help - it was up to Charlotte to make her way down the mountain. Charlotte is the bravest sheep of her flock. This is a fantasy book. ( )

Charlotte was a sheep who was never quite in step with the rest of her flock. Fond of climbing trees and jumping in rivers, unafraid of aging sheepdog Jack, Charlotte's antics constantly set her older ovine companions to tut-tutting. Then one day, when their shepherd fell and broke his leg, and Jack seemed disinclined to run for help, it fell to Charlotte to make her way down the mountainside on her own, to alert the farm to the accident...

I can't recall, at this point, how I heard about this German picture-book - author Anu Stohner is an expatriate Finn living in Munich, while illustrator Henrike Wilson lives in Cologne - but I'm glad that it came to my attention. I thought that Wilson's illustrations, done in acrylic paint on cardboard, were really quite lovely, and I will be looking for more of her work. Unfortunately, the narrative didn't impress me quite as much, although I did appreciate the message that being an individual, and marching to the beat of your own drummer, can be a strength. Somehow, though, the story just didn't ring true: I know that the point here is that Charlotte is adventurous, but some of her decisions seemed rather odd (dangerous even), and her "hitch-hiking" adventure just wasn't that convincing.

I vacillated between two and three stars with this one, only settling on three because I do like to see children's books from abroad make it to the American market, and because I enjoyed the artwork. ( )