Kindergarten-Grade 3-A delightful story about a chick who is raised by a boy. He "...was not the kind of mother the chick had expected, but she loved him anyway." When she is fully grown, she hatches a clutch of abandoned eggs and unknowingly mothers five ducklings. She is shocked when her children insist on going for a swim, but when they come back to her and she inspects them more closely, she realizes that "Ducklings were not the kind of family she had expected, but she loved them anyway." This tender tale will please families everywhere. The subtle messages of love, expectation, and parental roles will appeal to adoptive and extended families as well. The nurturing boy is a refreshing, albeit minor, character. The clean, simple, cartoonlike watercolors are placed in appealing juxtaposition to the text. Some illustrations are boxed into squares and rectangles, while on other pages the drawings are freely strewn across a clean white background. This warm, caring book should find a place on the shelf next to P.D. Eastman's Are You My Mother? (Random, 1986) and Keiko Kasza's A Mother for Choco (Putnam, 1992). A pleasant story-hour offering.
Beth Tegart, Oneida City Schools, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ages 4-7. When the baby chick looks out of the egg, she sees a boy. He was "not the kind of mother the chick had expected, but she loved him anyway." So it goes, with the chick becoming a hen and being given duck eggs by the boy to raise. She raises the ducklings, as she would chickens. and they love her anyway. And when the ducklings take to the water, despite her "DANGER dance," she loves them anyway. This graceful fable, in which love is greater than any set of labels, is well served by the watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations. The ducklings, peering attentively out of their eggs, and the little hen herself are quite individually rendered, and the drawing of the danger dance will inspire young performers. Varying page designs and effective use of white space amplify the visual pleasure. Mary Harris Veeder
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