About the Author:
Martin Waddell has twice won the Smarties Book Prize - for Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? and Farmer Duck (also Winner of the British Book Awards: Children's Illustrated Book of the Year), as well as the Best Books for Babies Award for Rosie's Babies and the Kurt Maschler Award for The Park in the Dark. Other titles include Who Do You Love?; The Hollyhock Wall; Owl Babies; Night Night, Cuddly Bear; Tom Rabbit and many stories for older readers. David Parkins has illustrated a number of children's books, including six Sophie stories by Dick King-Smith and the picture books No Problem; Tick Tock; Prowlpuss (shortlisted for the 1994 Kurt Maschler Award, the 1995 Smarties Book Prize, and Commended for the National Art Library Awards for Illustration), Aunt Nancy and Old Man Trouble and Aunt Nancy and Cousin Lazybones. Also the illustrator of The Dandy's Desperate Dan comic strip and an accomplished tenor, he is married with two children and lives in Lincolnshire.
From Publishers Weekly:
The star of Waddell's (A Kitten Called Moonlight) heartwarming tale starts life "All folded up so he'd fit in the egg," but soon the plucky duck is out and about, looking for the mother who's nowhere to be seen. Astute readers will notice on the book's title page that Mother Duck is merely taking a swimming break in the water near the nest, but Webster J. Duck doesn't know that: he heads for the adjacent farm fields and quacks queries to increasingly larger "ducks" with waggly tails (a dog), woolly coats (a sheep) and even udders (a cow). Each time, he realizes that "My mother would go/ quack-quack like me!" His new friends, moved by his despair, offer up clarion calls of "BOW-WOW!" "BAA-BAA!" and "MOO-MOO-MOO-MOO!" and successfully beckon Webster's mother for a joyous first meeting. Even very young children may notice the striking similarities to the classic Are You My Mother? Parkins's (Aunt Nancy and Old Man Trouble) painterly watercolors, however, possess a magic and originality that's hard to resist: his lakeside landscape shimmers with light, and he endows his pint-sized protagonist with emotional depth. Ages 2-4. (Aug.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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