QUACK

A foundling duck becomes an emotional-support animal and brings the whole fifth grade together.

Pouya and Shady’s good deed—reuniting some ducklings with their mama—finds one duckling accidentally returning home with the two boys. Shady’s mom almost makes him return the duckling to its mother, until she sees Shady murmuring and quacking softly to the little bird. Shady has severe anxiety and selective mutism; once his mother realizes the effect the duck has on Shady, she’s converted. The duck, Svenrietta, becomes an emotional-support duck and a “registered service animal” at school. (The multiple kids who share narration duty also share the common misunderstanding that an emotional-support bird has the same legal status as a service animal.) What follow are the sort of charming misadventures one might expect when a diaper-clad waterfowl attends class. Svenrietta makes Shady and Pouya popular for the first time. Wealthy, white Shady sticks up for all the other “underducks”: the ESL kids; the kids who are poor like Pouya, who’s an Iranian refugee in a two-mom family; DuShawn, who is gender-nonconforming. The empowering diversity themes are well-meaning but stand on a shaky underpinning. In addition to the propagation of common myths about domesticating wild animals, service animals, and refugees, there’s an overarching Christmas plot in a story where one of the primary narrators is from a Muslim family (though religion per se goes entirely unmentioned).

Funny duck shenanigans don’t mitigate the concerns the text raises.