Little One Step

Youngest children in families or groups, and children who feel they are always a step behind everyone else will love Little One Step. On second thought, everyone, child and adult, will love it, for who hasn’t felt a bit out of step or unable to keep up with the rest at some time or another.

Three little ducks are lost, and the older ducks know they must keep walking to find their mama. This is too much for the littlest one, but big brothers offer support, encouraging him to take just one step at a time. And that’s how he gets his name of ‘Little One Step’.

Very soft apricot and yellow tones inside lightly drawn lines on pale creamy pages capture the journey of the ducklings. Sometimes James shows their trek from on high, sometimes up close, and always making the viewer part of their adventure. The large format portrait shape of the book helps with this too, allowing for plenty of space around the illustrations, and adding to the sense of a journey. This is a book which will certainly elicit demands to be read again and again, and I can see lots of Little One Steps following on from James’s gentle text and images.