Duck gets a job by Sonny Ross

Five Mile Press, 2017. ISBN 9781760405359
(Age: 4+) Highly recommended. Work, Following your dream, Humour. When Duck realises that he needs to get a job, he looks at his friends, all of whom have jobs in the city. They love their spreadsheets and encourage him to apply for a job like theirs. So he follows their lead and applies for a job and getting an interview must decide how he will look. After several swaps, he puts on a hat and takes a briefcase with him, opting for the professional look. Following advice from his friends, he gets the job and begins his work in the city. But he finds the work boring and falls asleep and so decides to quit.
He thinks hard about what he should do. He has always loved art and done well with his art work, so he puts his work into a portfolio and applies for a different job. The interviewer hires him and so he has work which he loves, and he never falls asleep.
This delightful story based firmly on the author's own experiences, will have younger children loving hearing it read aloud, or read themselves, absorbing the message of following your dreams, of not being influenced by others. The tale will be a wonderful springboard for children to share ideas about their own likes, dreams, abilities and futures. I love the illustrations, with humour for kids to find and laugh about, offering differing visions of city life, showing an obvious delineation between the job that Duck hates and the one he loves. The colours reflect Duck's mood and the duck motif is repeated in the glorious endpapers. With deceptively simple but beguiling text I loved working out just how the author had achieved his aims through the text and his illustrations.
Fran Knight