• Age: 5 to 10
• Grade: k to 4
• Reading age: 7 to 8

From best-selling author Brian P. Cleary, Six Sheep Sip Thick Shakes is a real mouthful! Presenting readers with twenty-four challenging and hilarious tongue twisters, Cleary's inventive sentences and Steve Mack's appealing art will leave readers tongue-tied?and laughing through their teeth.

Brian P. Cleary is an American humorist, poet, and author. He is best known for his books written for grade-school children that explore grammar, math and poetry in humorous ways. In his role in the digital division of American Greetings, he's put words in the mouths of Dolly Parton, Christina Aguilera, William Shatner, Meghan Trainor and more. The multi-million selling author has performed poetry workshops in 500 elementary schools across the county. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Brian P. Cleary's profile page

Steve Mack has been drawing for as long as he can remember. His first lessons in art were taught to him by watching his grandfather do paint-by-numbers at the summer cottage. Later, he took every drawing class he could find at the local community center and spent every hour of math class sharpening his drawing skills.

After graduating from college as a Visual Communications know-it-all, he instead turned from graphic design back to his roots as an illustrator. Steve started freelancing in the year 2000 and has had a steady climb upwards since that time.

Steve has worked with major clients such as Target, Walgreens, Hallmark, Sterling Publishing, Scholastic, Harcourt, Chronicle Books, and recently spent a year in Ohio working directly with American Greetings illustrating greeting cards.

Steve now resides and illustrates on a small farm with his wife and two young children.

Steve Mack's profile page

• Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books

"Tongue twisters constitute one of the few challenges in which failure is as much fun as accomplishment, and here Cleary offers two dozen originals that should reduce the most eloquent youngster to a state of giggling babble: 'The TV was fee-free for channel 3'; 'Few knew that Mr. Froo flew in the fleshy, freshly fried fish from Florida.' Not all selections are equally pithy, and several try a little too hard to pack in as many tangling terms as possible without actually upping the difficulty much ('Nan's knapsack straps sat on the striped steps'). Mack's goofy digitally rendered cartoon cast manages, however, to turn even the most sense-straining ditty into a literal performance. While this can't match Jon Agee's Orangutan Tongs (BCCB 4/09) for cleverness or panache, it does feature the welcome bonus of a page of 'Make Your Own Tongue Twisters' suggestions, featuring letter combinations, initial sounds, and ending letters that are most likely to induce verbal meltdown. Surely there's a phonics lesson in here somewhere." --The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Journal

"A pleased penguin takes a shower as 'The water in Flo's Inn flows in frozen.' A Christmas elf faces down a menacing dog: 'Sammy stammered as he told the stray in the sleigh to stay.' Brightly colored, bold-hued pictures add clarity and humor. An appended 'Make Your Own Tongue Twister' page helpfully provides letter combinations that 'can be particularly difficult to pronounce.'" --The Horn Book Guide

Journal

"Anyone who struggles with Dr. Seuss' Fox in Socks (1965) will enjoy these silly sentences that simply must be read out loud. Since the sentences are short, they look easy, but overconfident readers beware: it'd be hard enough to pronounce all these words correctly, even without humor adding to the challenge, especially in one case about 'kissing quickly'—name a six-year-old who doesn't giggle at kissing. Colorful, stylized illustrations feature human and animal characters, and each image and sentence form a discrete package, one to a page or to a spread. Occasional details in the pictures are hilarious, especially the one for 'Tim and his thin twin sister, Trish, twice tricked their thick sitter,' showing giraffe kids dangling a spider over a panicking hippo babysitter, who is about to sit on a tiny whoopee cushion that emits 'poot!' in tiny type. The title twister, which closes the collection, is reminiscent of Joanna Cole and Stephanie Calmenson's Six Sick Sheep (1993). A note at the end offers suggestions for aspiring tonguetwister creators." --Booklist

Journal

"Readers who take this on should prepare their tongues for a wicked tangling…and their stomach muscles for a workout. A quick look at some of Cleary's sentences can be deceiving—seemingly simple syllables are truly tongue twisting when read aloud: 'The water in Flo's Inn flows in frozen.' Others, however, look tricky right from the start: 'Few knew that Mr. Froo flew in the fleshy, freshly fried fish from Florida.' From the silly and ridiculous to the everyday, this tongue-twister collection covers a wide variety of topics. Ever the educator, the author's backmatter includes some great tips for creating tongue twisters, breaking down for readers just what makes them so difficult to say. Mack's brightly colored madcap cartoon illustrations match the tongue-in-cheek humor of the text. 'The ghostly moans were mostly groans' pictures a child ghost wildly protesting having to rake the leaves while his unimpressed father stands by, arms crossed. And it's tough to beat the silliness of slightly cross-eyed and buck-toothed men in sandals and togas playing basketball: 'See the Greek geeks as they shoot three free throws.' Not for the faint of heart; tongues should really be limbered up before tackling these." --Kirkus Reviews

Journal

"This high-energy collection of pleasantly rhythmic tongue twisters features a screwball cast of cartoon animals rendered in digital collages. Characters include a long-eared, lovestruck dog ('Miss Tish made a quick list of/ those she'd kissed quickest') and a pair of hungry bears excitedly awaiting their meal at a restaurant. 'Few knew that Mr. Froo flew in the/ fleshy, freshly fried fish from Florida.' An appended guide provides tips for creating effective tongue twisters'something readers are likely to try out once they master the satisfying sounds of these silly, slippery, serpentine selections." --Publishers Weekly

Journal