Alice Cary

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

The Season of Styx Malone

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Children's Top Pick, November 2018

Ten-year-old Caleb Franklin longs to be anything but ordinary, which feels impossible in his quiet hometown of Sutton, Indiana. But one night, Caleb and his 11-year-old brother, Bobby Gene, trade their toddler sister, Susie, for a large bag of fireworks.

Never fear—their mom soon retrieves little Susie, but the boys manage to keep the fireworks. Their summer really ignites when the brothers meet an older teen in foster care named Styx Malone, who hatches a plan to help the boys repeatedly “trade up” their loot—with the goal of eventually buying a moped—in what he calls a “Great Escalator Trade.”

Award-winning author Kekla Magoon’s The Season of Styx Malone is an old-fashioned summer adventure and coming-of-age story that ever so gently touches on the racial prejudice faced by its three African-American protagonists.

Caleb and his brother live in a parent-protected bubble that they’re more than ready to burst, and their mom dismisses Styx as “a handful of trouble.” But to Caleb, this smooth-talking, deal-making newcomer represents everything he feels he’s missing in his small town.

But as the three boys’ adventures multiply, they also become more dangerous and questionable. The boys are soon stowing away on trains and stealing a motor from an auto parts warehouse. Still mesmerized by Styx, Caleb begins to wonder about his friend’s motives and deeds, noticing that “Styx made it sound like breaking the rules wasn’t really so bad as long as you didn’t get caught.”

As the boys’ secretive exploits build toward an inevitable climax, readers will enjoy being part of Magoon’s thoughtful novel about the pleasures and constraints of friendship, family, trust and betrayal.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ten-year-old Caleb Franklin longs to be anything but ordinary, which feels impossible in his quiet hometown of Sutton, Indiana. But one night, Caleb and his 11-year-old brother, Bobby Gene, trade their toddler sister, Susie, for a large bag of fireworks.

NonfictionMemoir

Late-Life Love

Review by Alice Cary

What do literature and film tell us about living and loving in later life? What is it like to experience life in its latter stages? These are the questions Susan Gubar began to answer during a year in which she and her second husband decided they must leave their beloved home of many years and downsize to an apartment.

Late-Life Love is a unique blend of memoir and literary commentary, with Gubar at the helm as an accomplished, bravely honest and mesmerizing guide. A retired professor at the University of Indiana, she is the co-author of the groundbreaking The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. She’s also shared her own cancer struggle in Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer.

The love of Gubar’s life is retired English professor Donald Gray, with whom she shares a “head-over-heals” romance with literature. She deems her “heals” typo apt, as they have both faced a variety of serious physical challenges: Don, 17 years her senior, fell and required knee surgery as she wrote this book, while she remains weakened by cancer. She’s jubilant to have survived well beyond her projected “expiration date” given at the time of diagnosis, thanks to an experimental drug.

Theirs is a cerebral household catering to a cavalcade of friends, children and grandchildren; readers will delight in being welcomed into the fold. Amid joys and concerns (a sick grandchild, an estranged friend), the author shares the many fears and second thoughts she and her husband have while trying to navigate their monumental transition.

Throughout, Gubar seamlessly weaves in lengthy discussions of a wide range of literature addressing late-life concerns, including works by Shakespeare, John Donne, Donald Hall, Colette, Gabriel García Márquez and Marilynne Robinson. Reading these analyses is like having a season ticket to a series of fascinating literary discussions. Gubar offers both realism and hope, concluding: “Late-life love may heat at a lower temperature, but it bubbles and rises.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What do literature and film tell us about living and loving in later life? What is it like to experience life in its latter stages? These are the questions Susan Gubar began to answer during a year in which she and her second husband decided they must leave their beloved home of many years and downsize to an apartment.

NonfictionMemoir

Changing lives, one girl at a time

Review by Alice Cary

Khalida Brohi, named one of Forbes “30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs in Asia,” has an engrossing, important story to tell about her childhood in Pakistan. Her mother was 9 years old when she married Brohi’s father, who was 13, in an “exchange marriage.” Brohi, the oldest daughter of her parents’ eight children, was born in a tribal area of the country when her mother was 14. Born severely malnourished, she wasn’t expected to survive. Yet survive she did, and despite living in poverty and moving between rural areas, slums, towns and cities over the years, she describes her childhood as “joyous” in I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan. 

That happiness was forever tarnished, however, in 1999. That year, Brohi’s uncle and two others strangled her 14-year old cousin, Khadija, in an “honor killing,” because Khadija ran away with her boyfriend, leaving behind the man she had been promised to as a young girl.

“The pain shoved me into a new reality,” Brohi writes. Luckily, her own parents had very different ideas than the rest of their family, and they refused to promise Brohi to anyone, in defiance of tribal custom. Her father explained that instead, his daughter’s job was to honor her family with good grades and an education. Brohi did just that, becoming a vocal advocate against honor killings, working to empower Pakistani women and to redefine the tribal definition of honor. That journey began when she was just 16 and has taken her around the world, despite death threats and even an office bombing.

She founded a nonprofit called Sughar Foundation (sughar means “skilled and confident woman” in Urdu), which focuses on the empowerment of women in rural Pakistan. Its goal is to put an end to exchange marriages, child marriages and honor killings while offering job training to women in traditional embroidery. The organization teaches women about their equal status and rights, and helps them launch their own businesses.

Writing in compelling, page-turning prose, Brohi shares a deeply felt, intimate portrait of what it means to be a global activist. There’s even a love story―one with a happy ending. Don’t miss I Should Have Honor, which deserves a legion of caring, activist readers.

Khalida Brohi, named one of Forbes “30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs in Asia,” has an engrossing, important story to tell about her childhood in Pakistan. Her mother was 9 years old when she married Brohi’s father, who was 13, in an “exchange marriage.” Brohi, the oldest daughter of her parents’ eight children, was born in a tribal area of the country when her mother was 14. Born severely malnourished, she wasn’t expected to survive. Yet survive she did, and despite living in poverty and moving between rural areas, slums, towns and cities over the years, she describes her childhood as “joyous” in I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan. 

Children's & YAPicture Book

Our favorite bear returns

Review by Alice Cary

Great news for Corduroy fans: In honor of the 50th anniversary of Don Freeman’s classic 1968 picture book, the adventurous bear stars in a new adventure, Corduroy Takes a Bow, written by legendary stage and screen actress Viola Davis.

In this new story, Corduroy heads to a Broadway show (“Mother Goose Live”) with his owner, Lisa, and her mother, and his quest to get a better view leads to an exciting on-stage conclusion. The book is a fitting tribute to Corduroy’s creator, as Freeman was a Broadway aficionado, often hanging out backstage and sketching actors.

Davis was eager to take on the project because Freeman’s book meant so much to her as a child: She remembers Corduroy as one of the few books that featured an African-American heroine. “To be able to introduce a new generation, including my daughter, to this character that was so special to me in my childhood is an incredible honor,” Davis said in a recent interview with People.

Corduroy Takes a Bow stays very much in the spirit of the original book’s prose and illustrations. Jodi Wheeler works in Freeman’s distinctive art style, filling Davis’ story with pastel-toned, old-fashioned yet lively illustrations.

This new Corduroy adventure will encourage a whole new generation of young readers to fall in love with this very special bear.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Great news for Corduroy fans: In honor of the 50th anniversary of Don Freeman’s classic 1968 picture book, the adventurous bear stars in a new adventure, Corduroy Takes a Bow, written by legendary stage and screen actress Viola Davis.

YA FictionYA

College Rejection 101

Review by Alice Cary

Ariel Kaplan’s We Regret to Inform You is a compelling novel about every highly motivated college applicant’s worst nightmare. High school senior Mischa Abramavicius should have had it made. She goes to a tony prep school on scholarship where she’s a star student. But when college acceptances start rolling in and her classmates are accepted to places like Harvard and Princeton, Mischa gets nothing but rejections. She doesn’t even get into her safety school, Paul Revere University.

Shocked and ashamed to tell her single mother, Mischa visits Revere’s admissions office and discovers that her transcript has been altered. But her original transcript is in order, leading Mischa to realize that something fishy is going on. With help from her best friend, Nate, and a group of hacker girls who call themselves the Ophelia Syndicate, Mischa begins to dig deeper.

As unlikely as this all sounds, Kaplan makes everything seem believable with the help of her wisecracking yet thoughtful narrator. Without any college acceptances, Mischa begins to question her very identity. But as she gets to the bottom of her application disaster, she also re-examines her dreams, goals and all-consuming pursuit of success.

We Regret to Inform You is an entertaining look at the college admissions rat race that includes crime, a cover-up and plenty of heart and soul.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ariel Kaplan’s We Regret to Inform You is a compelling novel about every highly motivated college applicant’s worst nightmare. High school senior Mischa Abramavicius should have had it made. She goes to a tony prep school on scholarship where she’s a star student. But when college acceptances start rolling in and her classmates are accepted to places like Harvard and Princeton, Mischa gets nothing but rejections. She doesn’t even get into her safety school, Paul Revere University.

NonfictionSocial Science

The damage done

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, August 2018

Dopesick is no doubt the hardest book that award-winning journalist Beth Macy (Truevine, Factory Man) has written, and it left this reviewer in tears. Macy spent six years following families affected by the opioid epidemic in and around her adopted hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, and she begins by noting that several interviewees died before she had time to transribe her interview notes. It’s a heart-wrenching and thorough treatise on the national crisis that everyone knows about, but few deeply understand.

Macy addresses a wealth of complex issues in her engaging, spitfire prose, such as the difficulties of rehab and disagreements about the benefits of 12-step programs versus medication-assisted treatment. Macy is a masterful storyteller, and Dopesick is full of unforgettable stories, including those of policemen, caregivers, prosecutors and a dope dealer named Ronnie Jones.

Macy traces the origins of the crisis, which was perpetuated by Purdue Pharma, a company owned by one of the richest families in America. Purdue went from “selling earwax remover and laxatives to the most lucrative drug in the world”—prescription opioids they claimed were not addictive. As one Virginia lawyer aptly notes, “the victims were getting jail time instead of the people who caused it.”

Dopesick is dedicated to the memory of 10 opioid victims. Their stories and those of their surviving families form the heart of this book. There’s Jesse Bolstridge, a 19-year-old high school football star, and “blond and breezy” 21-year-old Scott Roth, who “looked like one of the Backstreet Boys.” Macy herself wasn’t immune to the heartache, admitting that there “were times that journalistic boundaries blurred,” especially when it came to the lively and likable young mother Tess Henry, whom Macy interviewed during drives to Henry’s Narcotics Anonymous meetings for several months.

There are no easy fixes, of course. Macy writes, “America’s approach to its opioid problem is to rely on Battle of Dunkirk strategies—leaving the fight to well-meaning citizens, in their fishing vessels and private boats—when what’s really needed to win the war is a full-on Normandy Invasion.” It’s indeed time to storm the beaches, and Dopesick is a moving, must-read analysis of a national crisis.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage and edited online for clarity. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Dopesick is no doubt the hardest book that award-winning journalist Beth Macy (Truevine, Factory Man) has written, and it left this reviewer in tears. Macy spent six years following families affected by the opioid epidemic in and around her adopted hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, and she begins by noting that several interviewees died before this book was published. It’s a heart-wrenching and thorough treatise on the national crisis that everyone knows about, but few deeply understand.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A family finds strength in relying on one another

Review by Alice Cary

In Cindy Baldwin’s big-hearted debut novel, Where the Watermelons Grow, everything seems to be going wrong for 12-year-old Della Kelly. There’s currently a summer drought in her town of Maryville, North Carolina, which is bad news for the Kelly family farm―even their beloved watermelons are dying on the vine. But what worries Della the most is the fact that her mother’s schizophrenia is flaring up for the first time in four years, leaving her unable to function, much less care for Della’s 16-month-old sister, Mylie.

Della can’t help feeling that her mother’s illness is her fault, since her symptoms appeared soon after Della was born. Feeling that it’s up to her to not only to help, but cure, her mother, she seeks out Tabitha Quigley, a local beekeeper whose family’s honey seems to hold magical cures. But Miss Tabitha doesn’t offer the cure that Della yearns for, leaving her feeling more isolated and helpless than ever.

Baldwin’s portrait of a strong, loving family facing a mental health crisis is nuanced, sensitive and believable. Although Della can’t bear to confide her worries in her best friend, both she and her father slowly realize they can’t keep their problems to themselves.

One of the great strengths of this book is that Baldwin offers plenty of hope but no easy fixes. Della learns invaluable lessons and realizes she has strengths she never imagined along with supportive family and friends who are ready to help. And most of all she learns that “No sickness in the world could make my mama’s love for us less real.”

Where the Watermelons Grow is a spot-on, insightful novel about a preteen learning to live with and accept a parent’s mental illness.

In Cindy Baldwin’s big-hearted debut novel, Where the Watermelons Grow, everything seems to be going wrong for 12-year-old Della Kelly. There’s currently a summer drought in her town of Maryville, North Carolina, which is bad news for the Kelly family farm―even their beloved watermelons are dying on the vine. But what worries Della the most is the fact that her mother’s schizophrenia is flaring up for the first time in four years, leaving her unable to function, much less care for Della’s 16-month-old sister, Mylie.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A gentle and triumphant ode to friendship

Review by Alice Cary

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Paul,” begins the narration of an unusual, vibrant picture book from a Lithuanian writer and illustrator team that quickly veers into the unexpected in the very next sentence. “Wait, that’s not quite right. This story begins in a different way,” adds writer Evelina Daciutè. Daciutè’s lively, meandering narration is just one of the many pleasures of The Fox on the Swing.

This story is indeed about a boy named Paul, who lives in a very tall tree with a father who flies helicopters and a mother who makes mostly orange pottery. Every day Paul walks to the bakery to buy freshly baked rolls for his family’s tea, and on the way home he often encounters a fox on a park swing.

The two become fast friends, although as in most fables, this is a prickly, clever fox. “Being generous is like an ocean,” the fox tells Paul. “Would you like to be a drop in that ocean?” When Paul nods, the fox asks for one of his rolls.

The story is filled with humor and joy, all enhanced by the busy, beautiful collage-style art of Aušra Kiudulaite, which includes a lively cornucopia of helicopters, parades, wild animals, constellations, funny labels and signs on each and every page.

Paul’s storybook life turns upside down when his family moves to a new city, forcing him to leave behind his best friend, Fox. Everything will be better, Paul’s parents promise, but Paul doesn’t see things that way. Happily, an unexpected treat is eventually revealed after the move.

The Fox on the Swing transforms a tender story about friendship and moving into a jubilant, philosophical celebration of unexpected delights. It’s truly a book worth rereading, and new rewards are likely to be discovered each time.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Paul,” begins the narration of an unusual, vibrant picture book from a Lithuanian writer and illustrator team that quickly veers into the unexpected in the very next sentence. “Wait, that’s not quite right. This story begins in a different way,” adds writer Evelina Daciutè. Daciutè’s lively, meandering narration is just one of the many pleasures of The Fox on the Swing.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Coming out, piece by piece

Review by Alice Cary

Twelve-year-old Claudia Dalton panics when her dad mysteriously disappears, until he sends a postcard saying that he “needs a little time to think some things over” while he visits an old friend. Then he starts sending Claudia a series of mysterious clues in the form of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Claudia works hard to solve each one, hoping the solution will bring her dad home.

Dad, it turns out, has picked a thoroughly unusual way to reveal to his family that he’s gay, but the setup works brilliantly in The Jigsaw Jungle, Kristin Levine’s compelling portrayal of a family in the midst of transition. Levine knows exactly how such a transition feels, as her own husband and the father of their two daughters came out in 2012.

Adding to the excellence of Levine’s tightly drawn plot is the fact that this story is told in scrapbook form—as a series of emails, phone conversations, receipts, flyers and transcripts of old home movies—compiled by Claudia, who’s just trying to make sense of everything.

The Jigsaw Jungle has a wonderful cast of likable and believable supporting characters as well, each with their own issues. Claudia’s grandfather, Papa, is a recent widower, while her new friend Luis is a child of divorce. Levine’s novel adeptly shows how acceptance and change, as hard as they may be, are vital foundations for love. “I decided I’ll just have to get used to the pieces I’ve been given, even if they don’t form the picture I had imagined they would,” Claudia explains.

The Jigsaw Jungle is a triumph of a book, portraying sensitive family dynamics in a loving, engaging way.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Twelve-year-old Claudia Dalton panics when her dad mysteriously disappears, until he sends a postcard saying that he “needs a little time to think some things over” while he visits an old friend. Then he starts sending Claudia a series of mysterious clues in the form of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Claudia works hard to solve each one, hoping the solution will bring her dad home.

NonfictionBusiness & Finance

The vanishing middle class

Review by Alice Cary

What Alissa Quart calls “the failing middle class vortex” is indeed a powerful force, growing stronger every day, as she knows from personal as well as professional experience. When her daughter was born, mounting day care and hospital costs forced Quart and her husband, both freelance writers in New York City, to adjust their lives. Now, as executive editor of the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Quart spends her days investigating social and economic inequalities.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America provides an in-depth look at two things people all too often shy away from discussing: money and class. The term standard of living, Quart notes, is used less and less, perhaps because “the notion that a relatively high quality of life should include small pleasures and comforts has faded.”

Quart introduces readers to a variety of people and families being squeezed, whom she calls the Middle Precariat—a “just making-it group,” who “believed that their training or background would ensure that they would be properly, comfortably middle-class,” but whose assumptions turned out to be wrong.

There are teachers driving Uber, grading papers between rides; adjunct professors drowning in debt, whom Quart calls “the hyper-educated poor”; and immigrant nannies caring for wealthy families while their own children are left behind in their home country.

“Each story was like a tiny detail in a giant oil painting that allowed me to understand the whole picture in a different way,” Quart writes. She backs up these anecdotes with clear, sharp analysis, noting that a systemic problem is the undervaluation of caring professions such as teachers, day care workers and parents. She also points to a variety of solutions, including better, cheaper day care, a universal child allowance, public pre-K and universal basic income.

Like Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Squeezed is a thoughtful, enlightening and painful analysis of the ever-growing divide in the American economy.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What Alissa Quart calls “the failing middle class vortex” is indeed a powerful force, growing stronger every day, as she knows from personal as well as professional experience. When her daughter was born, mounting day care and hospital costs forced Quart and her husband, both freelance writers in New York City, to adjust their lives. Now, as executive editor of the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Quart spends her days investigating social and economic inequalities.

NonfictionMemoir

Paint by numbers

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, July 2018

As director of the African American Studies program at Princeton University, Nell Painter seemed to be at the pinnacle of her distinguished career. The renowned historian had written numerous books, including the bestseller The History of White People. But at age 64, Painter surprised everyone by leaving Princeton to take up something completely different: art school. The road was anything but easy, as she explains in her bold, brave account, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over.

Not satisfied with being what she calls a “Sunday painter,” she was determined to study art on a professional level. First she got a BFA at Rutgers University, then she earned an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Amid the tattoos, piercings and bright yellow hair of her fellow students, Painter’s fashion statement consisted of a white T-shirt, black pants and “sturdy” New Balance walking shoes. She was “an exotic in art school . . . a creature from another planet.” Her confidence was hardly boosted when a RISD teacher informed her that she would never be an artist. Adding to her turmoil were anguish and grief over the fact that Painter’s mother was dying on the West Coast, leaving her father depressed and needy, necessitating cross-country trips and interventions.

Nonetheless, Painter persevered, enjoying moments of absolute euphoria at having the time and freedom to paint, while also experiencing interludes of extreme self-doubt and loneliness. In the end, she triumphed by relying on what she calls her “old standbys: education and hard work.”

Painter concludes that “the Art World is racist as hell and unashamed of it,” but she was able to find her own artistic voice by incorporating both history and text into her work which, in a way, brought her career full circle.

Old in Art School is a fascinating memoir about Painter’s daring choice to follow a passion with courage and intellect, even when the odds seemed firmly stacked against her.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Nell Painter about Old in Art School.

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As director of the African American Studies program at Princeton University, Nell Painter seemed to be at the pinnacle of her distinguished career. The renowned historian had written numerous books, including the bestseller The History of White People. But at age 64, Painter surprised everyone by leaving Princeton to take up something completely different: art school. The road was anything but easy, as she explains in her bold, brave account, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A fascinating expedition for young readers

Review by Alice Cary

When Otis Barton and Will Beebe descended into the ocean’s depths in their bathysphere on June 6, 1930, they became the first humans to see deep-sea creatures in their natural environment. Barton and Beebe’s adventure inside their cramped invention was a great leap into the unknown—one filled with life-threatening risks.

Caldecott Honor-winning author Barb Rosenstock does a phenomenal job of choosing just the right details to bring this achievement brilliantly to life in Otis and Will Discover the Deep. Katherine Roy’s stunning, detailed illustrations show the marine life these two explorers saw off the coast of Bermuda, with gatefold pages that dramatize their otherworldly descent and endpapers that perfectly highlight the excitement and danger at hand. Completing the package are several pages of historical notes, including one from Library of Congress librarian Connie Carter, who was one of Beebe’s assistants. And don’t miss Roy’s fascinating description of her quest for artistic authenticity, which involved everything from building a digital model of the bathysphere to shooting reference photos.

Just as Barton and Beebe partnered to complete their bathysphere adventures, Rosenstock and Roy’s collaboration presents this story in a vivid, unforgettable way. Open these pages and dive right in!

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Otis Barton and Will Beebe descended into the ocean’s depths in their bathysphere on June 6, 1930, they became the first humans to see deep-sea creatures in their natural environment. Barton and Beebe’s adventure inside their cramped invention was a great leap into the unknown—one filled with life-threatening risks.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Lonesome ducks

Review by Alice Cary

Fans of Robert McCloskey’s classic book Make Way for Ducklings will delight in the sly humor of Ellen Yeomans’ new picture book featuring two ducks who are just trying to muddle their way through one of their great challenges—figuring out how to be a duck.

This Duck and That Duck live near the Big Puddle. They’re alone, even though, as This Duck proclaims, “At a time like this there should be Other Ducks. . . . If there were Other Ducks, we would waddle in a line.”

Nevertheless, as spring turns to summer, the pair does manage to figure out swimming (“It’s like waddling but in the water”), and to their surprise, they finally find some other ducks when they peer into the water below. Young readers will be eager to explain just why these reflected ducks simply won’t get in line. Inevitably, autumn appears, and This Duck and That Duck get the itch to fly south, wherever that is. Spring finds them back at the Big Puddle, but this time, miraculously, there is a line.

Illustrator Chris Sheban’s watercolor ducks are wonderfully expressive and a perfect match for Yeomans’ appealing text. If you’re looking for a picture book for the small ones in your own Big Puddle, line right up for The Other Ducks.

Fans of Robert McCloskey’s classic book Make Way for Ducklings will delight in the sly humor of Ellen Yeoman’s new picture book featuring two ducks who are just trying to muddle their way through one of their great challenges—figuring out how to be a duck.

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