THREE DUCKS WENT WALKING

Three little ducks wander through the pages, oblivious to the bull, the foxes, the hawk, and the snake whose clutches they happen to elude by their sudden shifts in direction. While these predators are foiled the ducks themselves are veering off to gobble up, in turn, some grasshoppers, some bugs, and some butterflies; they end up hack home, napping innocently under their mother's protective wings. The irony of the situation is calculated to bestow a superior omniscience on a picture-book audience, and Galdone animates the narrow escapes with his usual hard-to-resist expression. But in the wake of Hutchins' spiffier and wittier Rosie's Walk (1968), this comes across as a wind-up performance.