Webster J. Duck by Martin Waddell

Genre: general fiction


Publishing information: Scholastic INC, 26 pages


Summary: Webster J. Duck is about a baby duck who hatches from his egg and can't find his mother. He goes all around looking for a duck that could be his mother. He finds other animals but they don't say quack quack like him. The story has a happy ending when he finds another duck who sounds just like him.

Personal rating: *** Good. This is a good spin on a story that's been told over and over, a baby animal is lost looking for his mother.

Reading level: 2.0

Interest level: K-2

Integration: This story could be used to talk about how an egg hatches, because at the beginning it talks about what happens when Webster J. Duck comes out of his egg. The teacher could read this book to introduce the concept of birds hatching out of eggs. The teacher could talk about what happens after the bird hatches out. After reading the story the teacher could possibly culminate everything by having chicks hatch out in the room and talking about whether Webster J. Duck hatched out like the chicks or not.
This book would be great to talk about point of view. The author wrote this book from Webster J. Duck's point of view and he doesn't understand what a duck looks like. He goes around quacking to all different types of animals just to find out that they don't quack like him. The teacher could talk about why he didn't understand. Then the students could write about a time that they didn't understand something.

Potential problems: The only problem that I see is that children my not understand why the duck keeps calling the other animals ducks. That part of the story may take some explanation.