Dear Mr. Pinkwater,
I am a schoolteacher here in the Bronx NY and I grabbed the book Ducks off the shelf to read to a class I was covering at last-minute notice. Usually I like to preview a book before I read it aloud, but the cover seemed beguiling, and there weren’t too many words in it. Now I’m a veteran of reading many books to first graders, and few have the power to engage an entire class for upwards of ten whole minutes. Not in my neighborhood, anyway. Now I’m not saying the tittering tots understood Ducks, but we sure enjoyed reading it, and it was marvelously (and strangely) thought provoking.
Thank you some fifteen years later for a fine book.
Stephen Benoit
CES 230
Bronx, NY
Thanks for your fifteen-years-later encomium vis-a-vis DUCKS! It's not for me to praise my own work, but not that many picture books for little kids deal with the theme of death in a constructive and amusing way. Anyway, how do you know they didn't understand it?
