MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS

Robert McCloskey

It seemed at first that choosing just one book from our century for a child of the next would be almost impossible, but when I really put my mind to it, one title kept insisting on itself: Robert McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings.

Make Way for Ducklings has a lot of things I would want a child in 2101 to know about my world. It's an urban story with rural elements; it's a people story with animal elements. It's a comforting story about being safe under your mother's wing (pun intended, I suppose) while not for a moment minimizing the dangerous elements of life on the street. The fact that the cars in...