The Clippity-Cloppity Carnival
| Author | Valerie Tripp |
| Illustrator | Thu Thai |
| Originally Published | © 2018 American Girl |
| ISBN | 9781683370857 |
Table of Contents
Mr. Louie’s Farm
The WellieWishers are very excited. Mr. Louie, Aunt Miranda’s neighbor, has invited the girls to come visit his farm next-door. They skip along the field and down the hill from Aunt Miranda’s garden, singing to the tune of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”:
Mr. Louie has a farm, E-I-E-I-O!
And on that farm he has some…
“Chicks!” shouts Willa. And the girls respond “E-I-E-I-O!” Ashlyn says she hopes Mr. Louie has horses because she’s never met a real horse before.
When they arrive, Mr. Louie welcomes them, and says there’s something for everyone to love on a farm. And he’s right. Willa loves the clucking hens, crowing roosters, and cheeping chicks. Kendall loves the tractor, and likes to pretend to drive it. Camille loves to fill the cows water trough and splish splash the water. Emerson loves the wooly sheep and lambs. To the tune “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” she sings:
Hello, wooly sheep and lamb,
Sheep and lamb, sheep and lamb!
Hello, wooly sheep and lamb,
My name is Emerson.
Ashlyn loves looking at Mr. Louie’s horse in the pasture. It has a dark shiny coat. When Emerson yells out to it, it lifts its head and turns to face the girls. They can see a streak of white on its nose, like a bolt of lightning.
The other girls go to the barn swing when the horse ignores them. But Ashlyn wants to try harder to get the horse to come over. Softly, she whistles “Whee-oh-wheet.” Ashlyn holds out a bunch of carrots over the fence.
And then, the horse begins to trot over to the fence. Clip-clop, clippity-cloppity, clippity-cloppity! Faster and faster the horse comes. Soon, it’s galloping towards Ashlyn and the fence, thundering bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
Ashlyn jumps back, pulling her hands towards her chest. Then, as fast as the horse was running, it stops and yanks a carrot in its strong jaws. The horse swishes its tail and snorts its nose. Ashlyn, afraid, tosses the carrots over the fence and takes off running as fast as she can.
As the girls get ready to leave, they’re all talking about what they loved most of all. And when Kendall says she knows what Ashlyn loved most: the horse! Ashlyn shivers as she thinks about the horse galloping towards her. When Emerson asks her if the horse came closer, her voice wobbles when she agrees.