Seven Little Ducklings - Annette LeBlanc Cate - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Annette LeBlanc Cate

GENRE: Children's Picture Book.

PUBLICATION DATE: January 7, 2025

RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A silly little picture book about a mother duck and her ducklings. Cute illustrations, rhyming text, funny scenes. Could have worked as a good resource for beginners to counting, but has a major unaddressed problem.

Plot Preview:

One night, Mama Duck is fast asleep with her seven eggs tucked firmly under her wings. Unknown to her, the eggs start cracking and hatching, and soon, seven little ducklings, who don’t want to disturb their tired Mama, step into the wild alone to explore their new surroundings. When Mama wakes up in the morning, she is horrified to see the empty egg shells and rushes to find her babies. She is successful in her quest, probably a bit too successful because somehow, she ends up with more babies than there were eggs! What happens next?

(I hope spoilers are okay for picture books! But if not, skip the second para below.)

If taken at face value, this book is an excellent resource for little ones. The text, written in an easy-to-read ABCB rhyme scheme, is spot on in terms of meter. There are many opportunities for dramatized reading that would make read-alouds a fun experience. There are plenty of numbers to help little ones count until the initial double digits. There are several moments of adventure and laughter. The best part is figuring out how Mama Duck ends up with so many babies instead of the original seven. It’s hilarious how she is so frenetic about finding her kids that she doesn’t even realise she has picked up some kids who are quite obviously not ducklings.

**SPOILER PARA** The one thing that the book leaves unaddressed is an area of concern for me. It is easy to see that Mama Duck ends up with babies not her own as not all of her “rescues” are ducklings. But instead of locating their actual families and returning them happily, Mama Duck decides that she has enough love in her heart for all of them and hence takes all of her “children” under her wing, literally. Nowhere does the book clarify if the *other* babies were orphans or abandoned. What if their own mamas start looking for them and get worried at not finding them? How can Mama Duck decide that it is okay to take babies away from their families and that the all-encompassing love she has is sufficient? The fact that this isn't even brought up in the story is a major downer. If there had been at least some clarification on those young ones being alone in the world or that Mama Duck was just acting as their temporary caretaker and she intended to look for their families, Mama Duck’s actions would have appeared noble instead of questionable. **END OF SPOILERS** 

The illustrations are simplistic but quite cute. Using ink and watercolour for a book where a majority of the story is set in the wild, is a good choice as the hues lend a beautiful fluidity to the graphics. If you do pick this book, you need to pay special attention to the illustrations because the mystery of Mama Duck’s seventh duckling is resolved only through the graphics and that too at the end. If you miss this bit, the math won't math!

All in all, this is a book that could work well if you don’t ask too many questions. Other than the one issue I had, there was nothing else I disliked about the book. However, that one problem was big enough to bring my rating down.

Recommended only to be read under adult guidance so that discussion can help sort out any confusion over whether Mama Duck’s decision was justified. The content ought to suit early readers, so ages 2-5.

My thanks to Candlewick Press for providing the DRC of “Seven Little Ducklings” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.