Good Grief! My Kite Is Stuck and Other Stories (A Duck, Duck, Porcupine Story) by Salina Yoon

"Oh, No! My kite is stuck in the tree!" Duck laments.

Duck can't fly that high. Now Baby Duck will not get to see the kite rise high in the sky.

Porcupine steps in to help.

"Don't worry, Baby Duck. I'll knock it down with my ball," said Porcupine.

"OOPS!"

Now Porcupine's ball is stuck in the tree.

As Baby Duck looks on, perplexed, Duck throws Baby Duck's hula hoop up into the tree to knock down the ball. Now the kite, the ball, and the hula hoop are stuck in the tree.

Duck is exasperated. With a mighty heave she throws Porcupine into the tree! Now Porcupine, Baby Duck's hula hoop, his ball, and Duck's kite are stuck in the tree.

Baby Duck looks out at the reader as if to say, "Can you believe this?" She walks off, page right, and with a page turn, returns with a long ladder.

"Just what we needed!" says Big Duck.

She climbs the long ladder up into the tree and sits down happily in the tree with Porcupine.

"We can finally play with our toys!"

Baby Duck gives the reader THE LOOK.

The venerable noodle tale is alive and well, in Salina Yoon's My Kite is Stuck! and Other Stories (A Duck, Duck, Porcupine Book) (Bloomsbury Press, 2017). Baby Duck's deadpan face says it all, as Duck and Porcupine play their doofus roles drolly in this book in Yoon's delightful beginning reader series. Yoon's storytelling is simple, but her character development is complex and her simple blackline and flat color illustrations capture the funny misadventures of the well-intentioned Duck and Porcupine with the same ironic humor that Mo Willems brought to his Elephant and Piggie series. A first purchase for emergent readers.