Review: Not Great, but Not Bad
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 23, 2013
"Duckfish" by Gene Wilikers is an odd story about a tortoise and a hare who were walking along one day, when they happened to see an oddity swimming in a pond. It had parts of a fish and parts of a duck. Tortoise and Hare started to argue about what the "thing" was, stooping to personal insults to make their respective points. However, being old friends they soon apologized and agreed to ask the creature what it was.When the duckfish, for that is what it was, was asked to identify itself, it remained silent. Both tortoise and hare thought that to be most rude, and decided to ignore the uncivil creature and go along their merry way. The story closes with the duckfish merrily swimming in the pond, without a care in the world. A duckfish is happy just to be... it doesn't care what it's called!This story was good enough for children, I suppose. It had bright colors going for it, and the drawings of the tortoise and the hare made it rather apparent they would be a bit on the arrogant side. I'm not sure there was a lesson to be learned, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a children's book just for fun. They neither need nor want to always be learning something, and are quite content just to have a book read to them for fun. "Duckfish" is not bound for any best seller list, but it is fair to say I liked it. I am confident young children will like it, too.