HAVE YOU SEEN MY DUCKLING?

A next-to-first book—with just about the first of all nursery stories: a duckling leaves the nest, the mother goes off in search, the duckling isn't lost (merely chasing a butterfly). . . and is in good time found. Tafuri's illustrations, as before, combine clarity, amplitude, and calm—with perhaps a suggestion here (or is it the ducks, the reeds, etc.) of Egyptian natural-history friezes. In any case, they fill the eye even as they tell the story—to the words, occasionally, of "have you seen my duckling?" A crane hasn't, a beaver hasn't, a turtle and a fish haven't—but we have, right along: for, of course, the little duckling is somewhere in every picture. And when the mother spies him/her and calls, the little, duckling beckons the butterfly along too. Serene, playful, comforting.