Quackers

by Liz Wong

Overview

Jumpstart's Read for the Record® selection!

A cat who thinks he’s a duck?  He must be Quackers!!
This quirky funny book is about standing out, fitting in, and building a life with room for all.
 
Quackers is a duck. Sure, he may have paws and whiskers. And his quacks might sound more like...well, meows, but he lives among ducks, everyone he knows is a duck, and he's happy.

Then Quackers meets another duck who looks like him (& talks like him, too!)—but he calls himself a cat. So silly!

Quackers loves being among his new friends the cats, but he also misses his duck friends, and so he finds a way to combine the best of both worlds. Part cat, part duck, all Quackers!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593568873
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	03/14/2023
Pages:	34
Sales rank:	580,485
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 7.06(h) x 0.84(d)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

LIZ WONG was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she spent her early childhood painting and clambering about in mango trees. She is a painter and a freelance illustrator, with a focus on illustration for children. To learn more about the author and her work, visit LizWongIllustration.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Wong’s delightful illustrations perfectly capture the sweet silliness of this story. Children will appreciate Quackers’s quirky dilemma, and the underlying message that friends do not have to be all the same will surely not be lost on young listeners." —School Library Journal

"This picture-book debut about a cat with a paw in two worlds is at times charming, at times laugh-out-loud funny, and its ugly-duckling case of mistaken identity will endear it to many." —Booklist

From the Publisher

01/04/2016
Quackers “knows he is a duck because he lives at the duck pond with all the other ducks.” Circumstantial evidence aside, Quackers looks (and sounds) an awful lot like an orange tabby cat. Working in watercolor and digital media, newcomer Wong brings deadpan humor to both her narration and illustrations, which have the feel of cut-paper collages. Wong frames the dialogue and narration in lightly textured panels and speech balloons in a style reminiscent of Peter Brown’s Children Make Terrible Pets; one page features neatly labeled rows of duck “dinner options” like slugs, snails, seeds, worms, algae, and duckweed (“Not duckweed again!” protests Quackers below). A chance encounter with a cat named Mittens leads Quackers to an existential reassessment, but Wong doesn’t force him to choose: “Quackers is a duck. And Quackers is a cat. But, most of all, he’s just Quackers, and that makes him completely happy.” While the message about embracing one’s individuality is clear, Wong never gets heavy-handed. The ducks’ wholesale acceptance of Quackers, an ostensible predator, is one of the book’s most charming aspects. Ages 3–7. Agent: Alexandra Penfold, Upstart Crow Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

01/01/2016
PreS-Gr 1—Quackers is a cat convinced that he is a duck because he lives at a pond where everyone he knows is clearly a duck. Still, he often feels out of place because he meows instead of quacking, doesn't care for the dinner options (particularly duckweed), and especially hates getting wet. When Quackers unexpectedly meets "a strange duck" named Mittens, he is overjoyed to befriend another creature who understands him, shares a common desire to chase mice, and drinks milk instead of (yucky) duckweed. When Mittens sets him straight about his identity, Quackers feels right at home with the other felines, until he misses his winged friends. Ultimately, he discovers that he is fully able to maintain a dual identity as both cat and duck, which makes him happiest of all. Wong's delightful blend of both digital and watercolor illustrations, featuring the sweet orange tabby who radically sticks out in the vast midst of identical white ducks, perfectly captures the sweet silliness of this story. The simplicity of the illustrations, encompassing little more than black dots for eyes, never detracts from the expressiveness of the main character. Children will appreciate Quackers's quirky dilemma, and the underlying message that friends do not have to be all the same will surely not be lost on young listeners. VERDICT A humorous picture book story about the value of friendship despite differences.—Etta Anton, Yeshiva of Central Queens, NY

School Library Journal

2016-01-09
A cat who thinks he's a duck learns about himself. An illustration of a waving cat introduces readers to Quackers, the book's protagonist, who, the text informs, "is a duck." Quackers is secure in the knowledge that he's a duck: "he lives at the duck pond with all the other ducks," and "everyone he knows is a duck," after all. Regardless, Quackers—shown as a lone ginger-striped cat in a sea of white ducks—sometimes feels different. Readers may find it odd that on the verso of the next spread Quackers is speaking "cat" but on the recto speaks English. However, the comedy of his trouble assimilating to duck ways—incorporating humorous speech bubbles and well-designed text placement—should ensure that it isn't much of an issue. When Quackers meets another feline, he learns that the things that make him different from ducks are natural to a cat. However, after time among the other cats, Quackers misses his duck family. It is then that he learns he can enjoy both worlds, as he is both a duck and a cat, but "most of all, he's just Quackers." Harkening back to such classics as The Story of Ferdinand and Spotty, Wong's debut may not feel remarkably new, but it is a welcome addition to the family of books about love, self-acceptance, and the embrace of the different. Both relevant and adorable. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews