Just Ducks!
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
"Pitch-perfect throughout, enthusiastic and confident. . . . Positively ducky all around." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The young girl in this story may live in the city, but outside her window there’s a river full of mallard ducks! She hears them as soon as she wakes up, and on the way to school she sees them upside down bobbing for food. Interspersed with fun facts, her enthusiastic commentary about her feathered neighbors — what they look like, how they behave, where they nest, where they sleep — pairs swimmingly with cheerful watercolor illustrations. Back matter includes an index and a note about ducks.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While there's much to be said for interactive, hands-on learning, Davies's (Talk, Talk, Squawk) young narrator builds an impressive body of knowledge about ducks simply by watching the birds that live on and around the river that runs through her town. She knows about their eating habits (there's "dabbling" and "upending"), their wooing and parenting ("I like it when a drake shows off his handsome feathers to the ducks, trying to get one to be his girlfriend"), even how they sleep or not ("one night at choir practice, we heard them quacking softly outside the window as they ate worms off the lawn in the dark!"). The text, set in a beautiful typeface that recalls rippling water, is pitch-perfect throughout, enthusiastic and confident, knowing without becoming precocious (the girl's commentary is amplified with factual nuggets set in small type). Rubbino's (A Walk in London) watercolors, which range from closeup portraits to gorgeous waterscapes, combine a sketchbook immediacy and economy with an appreciation for the ducks' streamlined shape, handsome coloration, and placid and genial demeanor. Positively ducky all around. Ages 5 up.
