Whose Hatchlings Are They? Daddy Honk Honk! by Rosalinde Bonnet

IT IS THE END OF SUMMER IN THE ARCTIC. SNOW WILL SOON COVER THE TUNDRA.

EVERYONE IS ENJOYING THE LAST SUNNY DAYS.

Aput the Arctic fox is catching those last warm rays, feeling his fur grow warm as he lies on his back and sleepily watches the Canada geese flocking up to fly south, Suddenly he spots something left behind.

It's a speckled goose egg, slow to hatch.

But when Aput picks it up, the shell cracks right down the middle and a tiny blue goose pokes his head out, opens his eyes, sees Aput, and says...

"DADDY HONK HONK!"

Yep. Baby geese imprint on the first thing they see, and for this gosling, Aput is his parent! The fox's first response is to protest.

"I AM NOT YOUR DADDY!"

But the baby goose is a total cutie, and Aput is charmed. He sets off to find the gosling a family and fortunately, there are plenty of other tundra sunbathers who are all too eager to give him parental advice. A mother lemming is up to her eyebrows with babies, but she does have an extra fuzzy pink cap to offer, pointing out that it is very important to keep new babies warm. Olaf and Lilly the musk oxen offer some seedy grass to feed the baby, and the gosling chows down right away.

"DADDY CHOMP CHOMP!"

Nanook the Polar Bear is trying to do her morning yoga meditation. She's annoyed by the honking, and suggests that Aput needs to put that baby down for a nap posthaste. As Aput makes his charge a grassy cradle, Granny Puffin puts in her two-cents' worth of parental advice.

"YOU SHOULD ROCK HIM!" SHE SUGGESTS.

But the gosling is too excited to sleep, and seeing someone in the water, she jumps in, right on the belly of a sleeping walrus and slides down his tummy into the sea, which she takes to like an, er, gosling to water. Soon she is joined by a young narwhal, and the pool party begins.

"DADDY SPLISH SPLASH!"

"YOU MUST ALWAYS KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BABY!" CAUTIONS EDDA THE WHALE, FLIPPING THE BABY BACK TO APUT WITH HER FLUKE.

Finally the baby goose begins to tucker out, and Aput pulls out Andersen's Wild Swans as a bedtime story. All his friends gather round to listen as the sun sets over the tundra. It is a lovely scene.

"THIS BABY NEEDS A BEAUTIFUL NAME!" THEY ALL AGREE.

And Aurora it is, as the no-longer orphaned gosling settles down, surrounded by her new family, in Rosalinde Bonnet's charming Daddy Honk Honk! (Dial Books, 2017). This tale of accidental parenthood has a lot to say about being a father and about being an adoptive parent, but also about how it often "takes a village" to provide all a young one needs to grow up. Bonnet's story is humorous, filled with a recurring chorus of "Daddy Honk Honks," and a plentitude of advice from Aput's opinionated neighbors, but there's a warm reassurance for youngsters that little Aurora will have everything she needs to grow in her new home.

Bonnet's artwork is simple, done mostly in blackline drawings that border on the minimal, contrasted with the bright colors of flowers in the background. Illustrator Bonnet paces the story with cartoon-paneled pages set against contrasting full two-page spreads which show off the blooming tundra, the setting sun over the ocean, and the blended blues and greens of the northern lights that give little Aurora her name, or as Publishers Weekly puts it succinctly, "The ink-and-watercolor drawings are a mixture of atmospheric minimalism and impressive detail." This is a sweet story of love lost and found that fortuitously ends with the baby sleeping soundly for a very good goodnight.

Share this story with Ryan T. Higgins' hilarious hatchling goose hit, Mother Bruce (see review here.)