Wait, there's no color?

Robert McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings is really cute.  Ok so I try really hard to avoid words such as cute and nice on this blog because I'm talking about children's literature and those are the same words that everyone uses and I want to move a little bit past them.  But this is a story about a daddy and mommy mallard duck who find a new home in Boston to raise their ducklings.  Then, yikes I almost gave you a spoiler (and these books are like literally 20 pages with exquisite pictures on every page so the 'i don't have time to read' excuse really isn't cutting it anymore).  But as you can probably imagine the ducks must face a couple of challenges living in a big city like Boston.  

The illustrations are delightful, they are pencil sketches that capture everything-the hustle and bustle of the city, the serenity of nature, the concern of new parents, and the absolute cuteness of baby ducklings (I understand that duckling implies baby but I'm also using the word cuteness so I decided to just go all the way).  Little Leah loved this book, as did I.  She said, "oohh duckies" and watched each page carefully for the status of her new duck friends.  Afterwards she quacked all around the house, also very cute.

 Miss hard-to-please Eva looks at the first two pages and says, "wait, there's no color? I don't want this story."  To which I said, "that's fine I'll read it to Leah."  Of course once you start reading a story everyone in the room listens in and Eva gasped in all the right places, so though she didn't appreciate the pictures she still let herself get absorbed in the story.

Cuteness...that's kids stuff.