Do Like a Duck Does!

Five fluffy ducklings playing follow my leader with Mama are joined by a big brown stranger: ‘he has no feathers and he has no beak. He has four claws on his hairy-scary feet. He has two ears that stick up a mile…’ Mama has her doubts but insists he does like a duck does and leads him a merry dance through a muddy puddle to eat bugs, across a thistly meadow and into the river where it becomes plain the brown stranger is no duck.

Young readers and listeners are only too aware of the stranger’s true identity from the moment he emerges from behind the flower pots and can hardly contain themselves as he and they are teased and tantalised by Mama. Bates’ lively watercolour and crayon illustrations make it plain that she isn’t as naive as it might seem at first. Audience participation is guaranteed in the rhyming text punctuated with Flop!, Pop! and other onomatopoeic utterances.