Winner of the Parents' Choice Gold Award and a National Parenting Publications Association (NAPPA) Honors Award, A Duck in New York City is more than 'just ducky'! The compelling multi-media pictures creatively use material such as copper wire and buttons mixed in with vividly-colored painted and cartoon drawn pictures. The materials and visible paintbrush strokes add texture to each page, encouraging touch by little readers. The abstract quality to the pictures - particularly the backgrounds - will greatly encourage your child's imagination. The story has a clear plot, with the little duck striving to get to New York City and perform his ducky dance on Broadway; it is presented through a combination of varying line length, dialogue, and font changes to emphasize the repeated line, "Yes, you can." After the story, the lyrics to the accompanying CD are also printed, so you and your little one can follow along together while listening.
The moral of the story, listen to your heart, is an excellent lesson for parents and grandparents to stress to their little ones after reading the story. They can further emphasize the message, making it more fun, by using a different voice for the repeating line, "Yes, you can." After reading the story a few times, you can let your child fill in the blank whenever that line comes up. You can also talk about the little duck's feelings of having a goal and working toward it. Does your little one have a dream that they want to accomplish?
My three-year-old friend, Sam, loved the pictures in this book, holding the page for a few extra minutes each time before allowing me to turn it. He especially loved the page depicting the truckers holding up various newspapers, as each had humorous articles on them. Sam asked me to read him each one. He thought the list of "Big Betty's Favorite Driving Songs" was very funny, because it was also the names of the songs on the CD that came with the book.
--Audra