Carin BramsenBesprekingen

This story was cute and humorous and the pictures were adorable. We especially enjoyed the cat's and duck's facial expression

This is a spin-off of an earlier picture book, Hey, Duck! which I didn't really care for, but I ended up liking the easy reader more.

Duck, a soft-colored fluffy yellow, is out on a walk with Cat, whose white fur is set off by a striped tail, brown and black ears and eye circles, and a few brown spots. Cat is, naturally, unhappy when it starts raining, but Duck's silly antics cheer her up and soon they are having a good time.

Although I found the illustrations in the original book to be blurry and indistinct, I thought these were a little clearer and the soft colors were set off by the crystal rain drops and sprinkling of flowers. The text is still rhyming, but just in short, choppy sentences. "Cat wears a frown./Her head hangs down."

One thing this book definitely demonstrates is the confusion of reading levels. The publisher says they use "F&P Text Level Gradient," which few parents are going to know is Fountas and Pinnell, or exactly what that means. They mark it a Level 1, "Ready to Read" for preschool through kindergarten. Our local schools use a mixture of F&P and lexiles, with Scholastic Reading Counts in the upper elementary grades. A former staff member made an equivalent chart, which we use to sticker all our easy readers from black (easiest) on up. Looking up the lexile of this book, it comes in at 250, which is at the upper end of the titles we sticker as red (F&P D-H, lexile 100-275). And then we mistakenly put a green sticker on this one anyways which I need to fix... It's a little more complex to read than it looks, although it has just a few words on each page, some of those words are tricky ones.

Verdict: A nice filler for lower reading levels and a good choice if you need additional titles at this level for your easy reader collection.

ISBN: 9781524771720; Published March 2020 by Random House; Purchased for the library

I'm beyond enraptured with the illustrations in this book! Seriously, they're fuzzy and feathery and inviting on every level! Even if the story wasn't up to par (which is definitely was!), I think I'd still be in love. Duck and Cat are ADORABLE, and the way they light up each page with a sweet expression while on their "whooo's there" hunt is delightful. Great fun for the smallest of smalls to the tallest of talls!


**copy received for review

This adorable book about Duck who wants to be like his friend, Cat, is all about finding your own strengths as well as things you have in common. Duck tries to climb a tree with cat but gets discouraged when she can't. They decide to play something they both can do but Cat ends up in the water and Duck has to rescue him. In the end they are happy to find things in common while still being themselves. The rhyming and cadence make this a fun read aloud but it's the illustrations that really make you love the book.

This is a very cute story about a little duck who wants be friends with a cat, but he soon learns that they have very different interests and their friendship is not going to come easy. The illustrations are colorful and inviting and just so sweet.

a little duck keeps referring to a cat as a duck but the cat keeps correcting the duck. the cat is mean to the duck so the duck decided to play in the puddles by himself. a chicken comes and tries to take the duck but the cat saves him and plays along with the duck and he (the cat admits he is a duck)
4 books
4 CD

A clever and creative story about friendship. Curricular connections - how differences can be good.

Charming, gentle story about a duckling who tries to be a cat.

The illustrations are adorable and the story is very sweet. I just wish that the the dialogue is represented by speech bubbles or by quotation marks.

Cute book. When I lived on a farm my cat and ducks would curl up together and take naps in the sunshine.

Note the different fonts are the different voices of the two characters!

Seriously confused duckling mistakes cat for one of his own. The cat is apparently, and luckily, a vegetarian.

This is a playful look at friendship in spite of vast differences.

I saw a few mentions of this that looked very cute, but I was disappointed when I picked up the actual book.

A fuzzy duckling insists on being friends with a grumpy cat. After trying in vain to explain that not only is she not a duck, she does not want to be friends, the cat finally escapes the importunate duckling, only to realize she really would like to be friends - maybe she'd even like to be a duck!

The pictures are cute enough, sort of an airbrushed digital effect. They're not my particular favorite, but I can see lots of kids and parents finding them cute. However, the text was rather bland. It consisted of awkward rhymed dialogue, always the mark of, in my opinion, an inexperienced writer. It takes a really, really good writer to do a rhymed picture book well; it should not be the default for new authors. For example, "Hey duck! Why is your tail so long?/Oh, please don't call me duck. It's wrong." It just doesn't work for me. I can't picture reading this aloud in storytime and if a picture book doesn't work in storytime for me, it's probably not going on our shelves.

Verdict: This would have been very cute if it had just been simple dialogue, but I'm really picky about rhyming picture books and this one doesn't make the grade for me. If you are less picky, you might want to add it as the pictures are quite cute.

ISBN: 9780375869907; Published 2013 by Random House; Review copy provided by the publisher; Added to prize books