It Looked Like Spilt Milk

First edition (publ. Harper & Row)

It Looked Like Spilt Milk is a children's picture book written and illustrated by Charles Green Shaw. Originally published in 1947, the illustrations are a series of changing white shapes against a blue background. The reader is asked to guess what the shape is or whether it is just "spilt milk". The white shapes include a rabbit, a pig, a birthday cake, a tree, a squirrel, a mitten, and a great horned owl.

A Scholastic Corporation edition was published in 1989. A board book version was published in 1993. An audio cassette version was published in 1988 and has the narration of Peter Fernandez with the music heard at the beginning and end and read without music.

Reception

Kirkus Reviews wrote "Children love to play this game from earliest identification, and will like a book that plays it with them. Blue and white silhouettes make a cute idea book."

References

• Bader, Barbara, (1976) American Picturebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast Within, Macmillan p. 527. ISBN 0-02-708080-3
• Fredericks, Anthony D. (1993) Involving Parents Through Children's Literature: Preschool-Kindergarten, Libraries Unlimited, p. 27. ISBN 1-56308-022-2
• Silvey, Anita (1995) Children's Books and Their Creators, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 597. ISBN 0-395-65380-0