Favourite books: Farmer Duck

Add to My Folder

By Antony Lishak — author, former teacher and writer in residence for Literacy Time PLUS (visit www.antonylishak.com)

Explore the benefits of teamwork and the dangers of exploitation, using the simple context of this children’s classic

Shared bedtime stories bind us together. My daughter, Emily, is now 20 and at university, but so precious were those moments spent sharing Farmer Duck that even now when I type ‘How goes the work?’ into Windows Live Messenger, I know her reply will be ‘quack’. Thanks to the gentle genius of Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury, that duck has become a family hero. If you have not yet fallen under this book’s spell, prepare yourself. Great picture books can be revisited again and again, but classics like this don’t wait to be reread – they continue to visit you all by themselves.