A text filled with literary devices, including simile, metaphor, and a bit of alliteration accompanies detailed, full-page spreads in pen and watercolor. Onomatopoeia punctuates Oona’s triumphant ride from barn to pond with a larger decorative font, and responses from the three running ducks appear appropriately in three lines of rhyming verse. VERDICT A tale to encourage young readers to find and follow their gifts, the story of Oona is also one of friendship and courage. A suggested general purchase for library and classroom.
-School Library Journal
Martin tells the tale in rollicking cadences just right for reading aloud—”A gust of wind grabbed the sails and up she went. OOO-hoolie-hoo!”—and with fine comic flair Day sets the (more or less) naturalistically depicted tinkerer, every feather bristling with concentration, amid enticing jumbles of pulleys, ropes, and buckets of detritus.
Budding engineers of any species will agree that Oona has well earned the right to feel “just as big as a duck should feel.”
-Kirkus
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