Quacky Quack-quack!

by Ian Whybrow, Russell Ayto (Illustrator)

Quack, quack, quack!! What is all the commotion about? One extremely noisy little baby feeding ducks that's what!Mummy and baby are in the park feeding bread to the ducks, but it's amazing what a rumpus one little baby can cause! He holds onto the bag and will not let it go - and starts off the noisiest, quackiest, squeakiest, snappiest rumpus ever!

Genres: Picture Books, Animals, Storytime, Childrens

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Ian Whybrow is a British writer of children's books, first published in 1989. He has written over 100 books for children, has been translated into 27 languages and is published in 28 countries. His books are humorous and range from picture books to novels, short stories and poetry.

Reviews

[Panda Incognito · Rating 5 out of 5]

This picture book, which has now been out of print for years, is a family favorite. I enjoyed rereading it again yesterday, but it struck me how much of the charm, and how much of its enduring value, is based in who is reading it out loud. If someone read this in a perfectly ordinary way, it wouldn't have such enduring power as a childhood memory, but because my mom made exceedingly accurate animal sounds for all of the different creatures that showed up, it became a family classic.

[Dree Kinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quacky Quack-Quack! by Ian Whybrow is a book that many kids can relate to. It is about a baby boy that was given bread by his mother to feed ducks. A lot of children can relate to this, because a lot of families go to feed the ducks by the river or lake during their childhood. Instead of feeding the ducks, the baby boy decides to eat the bread himself. This causes commotion throughout the story, which introduces the many animal sounds to the reader.

The "quacky quack quack!" sound that the "ducky birds" made when the boy first decided not to feed them bread spread all over the city, and into the city zoo. Whybrow uses onomatopoeia's to convey the emotions and sounds that were being given off by the different animals throughout the book. The onomatopoeia's are in a separate font than the rest of the text, which adds emphasis for the reader while reading these sounds. The font size of these sounds also portrays the loudness that the animals make. On one page, the text for the lion is much larger than the text for the mice. This shows the children the different sounds and volumes of the animals that they are learning about through the book.

Russell Ayto, the illustrator does a great job of expressing the emotions of the characters throughout the book. The facial expressions of the animals properly showed their emotions and reactions to the initial noises that the ducks were making. At the end of the book, when the brother took away the bread from the baby and gave it to the ducks, the expressions of all of the animals changed. They all came together in the park and were happy because they were finally being fed the bread that they had been waiting for all along.

[Alli Maskell]

one of my favourites to read aloud ...to my own girls, to the children in preschool ...and now to my grandson!

[Eugene Magee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book would be a great book for a read-aloud to children. You can invite the children to make all the different word sounds in the story. I believe a child would enjoy this book.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and so did my daughter. We read it so often we could recite it in the car! Great illustrations too.