Free Doug Unplugs on the Farm by Dan Yaccarino

This is Doug. He’s a robot. Doug and his parents are going to visit the grandbots!
    “Everyone plug in!” said Dad.
    “We’ll be driving through farm country,” said Mom. “You can learn all about farms on the way.”

    Doug’s parents wanted him to be the smartest robot ever.
    Doug learned bushels of facts about farm things:

    a baby pig is called a piglet

    horses can pull plows

    cows need to be milked every day

    chickens lay eggs

    apples grow on trees

    sheep tend to follow each other
     
    He was just learning about how sheepdogs can herd sheep when suddenly …

    A whole flock of sheep ran into the road!
    And their car went into a ditch! And worse—the whole family came unplugged!
    “Oh dear,” said Dad.
    “Oh my,” said Mom.
    “Oh boy!” said Doug.

    Doug could see that the farm girl needed help.

    And so he made like a sheepdog, and together they rounded up those sheep.

    “Thank you!” said the farm girl. “Want to help with the rest of my chores?” she asked.
    Doug did!
    “Don’t go far,” said his mom.

    Doug knew that milk came from cows, but he actually got to milk one! And he learned that a cow’s tongue felt rough.

    They got hay from the barn—prickly!

    And picked apples from a tree—delicious!

    The horse thought both the hay
and
the apples were delicious.

    He scattered corn for the ducks.

    And Doug learned that baby ducklings liked to follow him.

    The farm girl fetched water from a deep, dark well,

    and Doug learned how thirsty—and smelly!—pigs can be.

    When he gathered eggs from the henhouse,

    Doug learned that roosters can be bossy.

    The rooster even chased the cat onto the roof of the barn! Luckily, Doug could fly up to get her.

    Doug could see for miles from the top of the barn. He could see his parents—and that their car was still stuck in a ditch.
    He could also see a tractor.
    Doug knew that tractors pulled heavy things—maybe it could pull their car out of the ditch?

    Dang!
The tractor was out of gas. But Doug had another idea.

    A horse! Of course! The horse had their car back on the road in no time.

    Doug and his parents thanked the farm girl, and her horse, and got back in their car.
    “Everyone plug in,” said Dad.
    But Doug stayed
unplugged
. He thought about all the ways he’d helped out on the farm. And all the stories he’d have for his grandbots.

    “I picked it myself,” Doug told them.
    And they thought he was the smartest little robot ever.

DAN YACCARINO is an internationally acclaimed author-illustrator with more than thirty books to his credit, including
Doug Unplugged
,
All the Way to America
,
Lawn to Lawn
,
The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau
,
Every Friday
,
Unlovable
, and
Dan Yaccarino’s Mother Goose
. Exhibitions of his work have been held in New York, Los Angeles, Bologna, and Tokyo, and he has been invited to the White House to read his books. Dan Yaccarino is also the creator of the TV series
Oswald
and the Emmy Award–winning
Willa’s Wild Life
.
    Mr. Yaccarino lives in New York City with his wife and two children. You can visit him on the Web at yaccarinostudio.com .