Swan Boat Snapshots: Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

I just returned from a trip to Boston with my granddaughter, where, like everyone who visits that beautiful city in summer, we had to take a ride in the Swan Boats in the Public Garden. Like a lot of the folks who do so, the idyllic scene made me feel as if I were a character in Robert McCloskey's Caldecott classic Make Way for Ducklings.

In case it's been a while since you heard or read this book, it tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard's search for the perfect place to hatch their eggs and raise their ducklings. Although they love the peanuts the passengers throw to them from the Swan Boats in the Public Garden, the park seems too busy and noisy for nesting. But when the ducklings hatch and grow big enough to follow, Mrs. Mallard firmly leads her brood, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack, back to the Public Garden, helped by a burly Irish cop who holds up traffic as they cross the busy streets of downtown Boston. There in the Public Garden they make their home on a small island, and Mr. and Mrs. Mallard teach the ducklings to follow the Swan Boats as they circle the Frog Pond each day.

It's a great story of loving parents and caring neighbors, and its duck's eye views of Boston, from the Charles River Basin to Louisburg Square to the little pagoda in the Public Garden pond, nostalgic even when the book was published, make anyone who has ever been there homesick for Boston all over again.

No American child should grow up without knowing this story. Even if he or she never actually takes a ride in those foot-powered Swan Boats, the child will know how they look, and how they will always look--to a duck.