DOES A DUCK HAVE A DADDY?

It’s difficult to say much against these related titles, but it’s also difficult to praise them. Each begins with the fact that all animals have both a mother and a father, then describes animal parenthood in increasing order of parental care, starting with insects and reptiles, which lay their eggs and never return. (Is a lizard an animal? Is a spider?) Next fish, birds, short-lived mammals such as mice, then camels, elephants, primates, and, finally, humans. Everything’s sweet and the cartoon illustrations are reasonably engaging, but the overall impression is didactic and bland and the format inappropriately cutesy and young for the information included. The endpaper declares, “There is no better way to get basic ideas across to young children than with humor and far-out comparisons.” Perhaps that’s true; if so, a little humor and some far-out comparisons should have been included—and a single offering, decently done, would have been plenty. Choose Marion Dane Bauer’s If You Were Born a Kitten (1997) instead. (Picture book/nonfiction. 2-5)