FUNNY FRANK
Dick King-Smith, , illus. by John Eastwood. . Knopf, $14.95 (112pp) ISBN 978-0-375-81460-0
This cheery twist on the ugly duckling story finds a barnyard chick named Frank longing to be a duck. From the moment he's hatched, Frank spends all his time at the edge of the pond. "Chickens can't swim," his worried mother tells him, but he tries anyway—with near-disastrous results. Frank is rescued by the farmer's daughter who, with the help of her veterinarian uncle and dressmaker mother, devises a little wet suit for him out of an old hot-water bottle and makes flippers from rubber gloves. Frank quickly becomes not only a speed demon on the pond, out-swimming his web-footed pals, but also a hero when he saves his mother from a fox. Nevertheless full happiness eludes him ("He was after all a chicken at heart"), and when a speckled pullet named Gorgeous catches his eye, he finally learns to embrace life on land. Thoroughly engaging, this story trips along in typically breezy King-Smith (
Reviewed on: 12/10/2001
Genre: Children's
Compact Disc - 978-1-4862-4724-0
Library Binding - 108 pages - 978-0-375-91460-7
MP3 CD - 978-1-4862-4826-1
MP3 CD - 978-1-5318-8708-7
Open Ebook - 61 pages - 978-0-307-52540-6
Paperback - 108 pages - 978-0-440-41880-1