The Surprise Family

From School Library Journal Kindergarten-Grade 3-A delightful story about a chick who is raised by a boy. He "...was not the kind of mother the chick had expected, but she loved him anyway." When she is fully grown, she hatches a clutch of abandoned eggs and unknowingly mothers five ducklings. She is shocked when her children insist on going for a swim, but when they come back to her and she inspects them more closely, she realizes that "Ducklings were not the kind of family she had expected, but she loved them anyway." This tender tale will please families everywhere. The subtle messages of love, expectation, and parental roles will appeal to adoptive and extended families as well. The nurturing boy is a refreshing, albeit minor, character. The clean, simple, cartoonlike watercolors are placed in appealing juxtaposition to the text. Some illustrations are boxed into squares and rectangles, while on other pages the drawings are freely strewn across a clean white background. This warm, caring book should find a place on the shelf next to P.D. Eastman's Are You My Mother? (Random, 1986) and Keiko Kasza's A Mother for Choco (Putnam, 1992). A pleasant story-hour offering.