Little Ducks Go

Title:

Little Ducks Go

Author:

McCully, Emily Arnold

Format:

eBook

Electronic Format:

HTML

KINDLE

Provider:

Libby

Language:

English

Publication Date:

2014

Subject:

Juvenile Literature

Juvenile Fiction

Description:

A walk in town turns into a harrowing adventure for six little ducklings in this Guided Reading Level C Book. Following their mother down the street, the baby ducklings are swept up in a gush of water and washed down a storm drain. "Quack!" says their mother. "Cheep cheep!" call the babies. Sailing through the sewer pipes, the little ducks go, as mother duck chases them from drain to drain, trying to keep them calm. When her quacks attract the attention of a kind-hearted man, the little ducks are rescued! With warm, nostalgic watercolor paintings, Caldecott Medalist Emily Arnold McCully takes readers on a journey, chasing the little ducklings and their mother through the streets of a small town and a busier city. Perfect for young readers, this is a satisfying story of accidental adventure— with a happy ending. A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year! The award-winning I Like to Read® series focuses on guided reading levels A through G, based upon Fountas and Pinnell standards. Acclaimed author-illustrators—including winners of Caldecott, Theodor Seuss Geisel, and Coretta Scott King honors—create original, high quality illustrations that support comprehension of simple text and are fun for kids to read with parents, teachers, or on their own! For readers who've mastered basic sight words already, Level C books feature slightly longer sentences, suitable for mid-to-late kindergarten readers, and introduce a wider range of high-frequency vocabulary words. Move onto Level D once you've mastered them!

ISBN:

9780823431281

Summary

A walk in town turns into a harrowing adventure for six little ducklings in this Guided Reading Level C Book.

Following their mother down the street, the baby ducklings are swept up in a gush of water and washed down a storm drain. "Quack!" says their mother. "Cheep cheep!" call the babies.

Sailing through the sewer pipes, the little ducks go, as mother duck chases them from drain to drain, trying to keep them calm. When her quacks attract the attention of a kind-hearted man, the little ducks are rescued!

With warm, nostalgic watercolor paintings, Caldecott Medalist Emily Arnold McCully takes readers on a journey, chasing the little ducklings and their mother through the streets of a small town and a busier city. Perfect for young readers, this is a satisfying story of accidental adventure-- with a happy ending.

A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year!

The award-winning I Like to Read® series focuses on guided reading levels A through G, based upon Fountas and Pinnell standards. Acclaimed author-illustrators--including winners of Caldecott, Theodor Seuss Geisel, and Coretta Scott King honors--create original, high quality illustrations that support comprehension of simple text and are fun for kids to read with parents, teachers, or on their own!

For readers who've mastered basic sight words already, Level C books feature slightly longer sentences, suitable for mid-to-late kindergarten readers, and introduce a wider range of high-frequency vocabulary words. Move onto Level D once you've mastered them!

Author Notes

Emily Arnold McCully was born in Galesburg, Illinois on July 1, 1939. She graduated from Pembroke College, now a part of Brown University, in 1961 and received an M.A. in art history from Columbia University.

After graduation, she held a variety of jobs in the art field that included being a commercial artist, a designer of paperback covers, and illustrating advertisements. When one of her illustrations was seen on an advertisement in the subway, she was asked to illustrate Greg Panetta's Sea Beach Express. She accepted that offer and went on to illustrate over 100 children's books. In 1969, she illustrated Meindert de Jong's Journey from the Peppermint Express, which was the first children's book to receive the National Book Award.

Her first solo venture, Picnic, won the Christopher Award in 1985. Mirette on the High Wire won the Caldecott Medal in 1993. Her other children's books include Amazing Felix, Crossing the New Bridge, Grandmas at the Lake, My Real Family, and The Pirate Queen.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (4)

School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 1-Little ducks do indeed go: not only where their mother leads them but also where they shouldn't. In this take on a familiar story, six ducklings accidentally slip down a storm drain while their worried mother watches anxiously from the street and tries to get help. Little Ducks Go reads almost like an abridged version of Eva Moore's Lucky Ducklings (Orchard, 2013) but with a simpler text that is ideal for beginning readers. McCully uses repetition of phrases like "Little ducks go" and animal noises such as "Quack" and "Cheep Cheep" to reinforce the important aspects of early literacy embedded throughout the story. The art, created with pen and ink and watercolors, reveals a more detailed plot with additional characters and an enhanced story line. The color and hue of the pictures feel vintage, reminiscent of earlier picture book styles. The descriptive images paired with ideal text for early readers and the satisfying ending make this book a suitable addition to most collections.-Megan Egbert, Meridian Library District, ID (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Horn Book Review

Out for a stroll with Mama, five ducklings are swept down a storm drain. McCully's watercolors tell the story, matching the natural language of the text. All ends well with a rescue and reunion with Mama. It's improbable that the mother duck would wait patiently during the rescue and happily ride in a car after, but most readers won't mind the slight missteps. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Review

This tale of duckling rescue has a surprisingly large cast for a 32-page picture book. There's mother duck and her six ducklings, of course. There's the boy who stops traffic when the mother duck runs across the street after the ducklings are washed down through a grating. There's the middle-aged man who shows up with a net to fish the baby ducklings out of the storm drain. There's a little red-haired girlhis daughter?who holds the ducklings in a cardboard box as he drives the ducks to a nearby pond in his car. She waves to them as they swim safely away. Even a neighborhood dog stops by to provide moral support. Skeptics may roll their eyes at the idea that it takes a village to save a duck, but they will probably still be charmed by the pictures. It would be easy to believe that the energetic pen-and-watercolor illustrations were sketched from life as McCully followed ducks around her neighborhood. The story may seem too sweet to be true, even though it resembles a real-life incident in Montauk, N.Y., that was also the subject of Lucky Ducklings, by Eva Moore and illustrated by Nancy Carpenter (2013). Very few readers will remain unmoved as that mother duck runs from grating to grating, trying to catch a glimpse of her children; everyone loves a duck. (Early reader. 3-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Caldecott Medal winner McCully has produced a raft of books for the I Can Read and the I Like to Read series, and the simple rhyming scheme and repetition of this entry into the latter effectively moves the story swiftly along. A mother duck and her six ducklings are walking down the street in a sylvan town when a sudden stream of water sweeps the ducklings down a storm grate. McCully offers readers a double perspective: one from the mother duck as she hurries from grate to grate trying to save her ducklings, and one from the ducklings beneath the surface, with the grates casting scary shadows upon them. The watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations capture both the details of the sunny day and the dark drains as the chase moves from quiet town to busy city streets, ramping up the tension. It all ends with a very clever rescue scene and a nice lesson in generosity and cooperation to boot.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2014 Booklist