The illustrations of this book are beautiful--they make me want to cup Daisy and her cousins (and little Pip) in my palm--and the story is lovely. Despite one reader's feeling that there's no message (or an inappropriate message), I think children have the right to literature that's more than didactic, that represents dramatic or emotional or natural situations for their amusement or wonderment or pondering. And ducks sit on eggs for other ducks. And sometimes, eggs don't hatch. True to character, though, Daisy is curious, determined, and sweet--this is why she sits so diligently on the egg and is able, through her own determination, to win over her doubting Mama. By the last page, when Daisy and Mama and Pip watch the sun rise on his "hatching day," I had a tear in my eye, and my nine-month-old was still interested in the bright and duck-filled pictures. |