Customer Reviews

Q Is for Duck: An Alphabet Guessing Game

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I did a story hour project for my Children's Literature class and this is one of the books I read to them. They really enjoyed it because it kept them guessing what the letters stood for. This book helps the child to expand their imagination because this book is not the usual alphabet books that says "A is for Apple". This book expands that horizon by incorporating the sounds the animals make. I would recommend this book to anyone.

This is a very nice book for preschoolers or kindergartners which is no doubt why it was on my entering kindergartner's Summer Reading List.

A typical example of the book's mental puzzles would be : "D is for Mole".
Why?
"Because a Mole Digs"

Want another example?

"G is for Horse
Why?
Because a Horse Gallops"

Pretty funny kindergartner stuff. And this pretty much exemplifies how the rest of the book runs. With the exception of a few choices that deal with digging, galloping and flying; most of the questions are answered by the sound that an animal makes.

Four Stars. Very good brain enhancing (educational) material that will make most kids stop and think if only for a moment

Pam T~
mom and reviewer for BooksForKids-reviews

Children love the riddle format of this guessing game book. In the course of reading, they learn about letters and sounds, questions and answers, and predicting and confirming. After reading the book, children enjoy writing and illustrating their own alphabet riddle books. This book always earns a "Read it again!" response.

I liked it because it is a good guessing book. My friend Jack (5 years old)liked it too. But my 3-year old sister, Catherine, was confused by it.

My daughter is now 24 and she still has her copy of Q is for Duck she has had since she was 2. She had the book memorized when she was 2 and we had to read book every day for as long as I remember. She kept her copy for her children. I now want all my grandchildren to enjoy this excellent book.

My kindergarten class loves this book! We are so used to doing beginning sounds for pictures that this twist makes them do higher level thinking based on experience. Great book!!!!!

We found this book in the library and my kids, ages 5 and 7, loved solving the word puzzle on each page. "Q is for duck" made no sense to them...till they realized that ducks quack! It is cleverly written and fun to figure out the clues for each letter. My non-reading 5-year old quickly memorized the short text and "read" the book to us page by page many times. We immediately bought it for a friend's child.

This is a fun way to play with the alphabet. Has kids guessing. My daughter picked up on the game very quickly, but that didn't stop us from having fun with it. I recommend it to anyone with small children just learning the alphabet. We've passed along many of our "little kid" books, but we're keeping this one.

This book bills itself as an "alphabet guessing game". It's true that there's some guessing involved, but all too often the answer is "This wrong letter is for this animal because this animal says something that starts with that letter", with little variation from these theme. My nieces (4 and 6) grasped the pattern within a few letters, which takes all the guessing out of this guessing game. However, other people might prefer it because of the transparency of so many of the letter-animal pairs.

The artwork is great. Very silly. F is for bird (because birds Fly) and we see a shot of a bird aviator. R is for Lion and we see the two parent lions scared witless because their cub has let out a huge ROAR. When M is for Cow, we see the poor milkmaid covering her ears because her herd is mooing so loudly.

I do have a slight concern about diversity. There are 42 people in this book, I just counted. Of these 42, 1 is black. 3 might generously be described as being dark enough to have a tan. And the remaining 38 are "peach", the so-called "flesh" color from the crayon box. Given that when this book was published, in 1980, blacks made up slightly more than 10% of the US population, I would expect to see about 4 black people (and a few Hispanics and Asians as well). Barring that, seeing no black people would at least not smack so blatantly of tokenism!

My 5 year old niece and I had lots of fun guessing at the answers on the very first reading. She did better than I. Teaches children to think outside the box. Very different. Creative and fun. An alternative alphabet learning experience.