Skalak debuts with a rhymed take on a well-traveled but never-tired plot: A hatchling wandering away from his Mama has some anxious moments, but finds his own way back in the end. The language is occasionally clumsy—“To the lakeside, plop on in. / Copy Mama. Take a swim. / Heads down under, rear ends up. / Tasting pondweeds. Glup, glup, glup.”—but younger children will enjoy the repetition, and veteran illustrator Long’s ground- and water-level scenes of the brown-and-yellow stray waddling amid wildflowers and pond foliage are typically rich in small, lovely natural detail. An appealing alternative when Jane Simmons’s modern classic Come Along, Daisy! (1998) has wandered off again. (Picture book. 3-5)
