GREENAWAY MEDAL WINNER – 1998
Helen Cooper
New York: Doubleday, 1998
29 pp
Age: 3 +
Interests: animals, cooking
Happy housemates Cat, Squirrel and Duck make soup together every evening, then sing a song and go to bed. Everyone has their own job to do and everyone is happy… until Duck decides he wants to be the head cook for a change. There ensues a big fight and Duck leaves in a huff. His friends wait and wait, growing more anxious. They eat their soup, which is too salty (adding salt was Duck’s job). When Duck finally returns home they happily let him help, which results in a huge mess but they say nothing… until Duck says he wants to play his friend’s bagpipes and another big fight ensues…
Warm and cozy drawings celebrate the happy home and hearth, and the joy of friendship. And soup. While there is a valuable lesson about the give-and-take of true friendship, I was a little put off by the fact that when these friends disagree they immediately fall to fisticuffs. In the drawings it’s of course made humourous, but if you or your child are uncomfortable with a real drag-em-down fight breaking out in an otherwise snug fireside picture book, you might want to think twice about this one.
Rarest Kind of Best 