There’s a nice pacing to Sarah Mackenzie’s 2024 picture book Dear Duck, Please Come! There are just a few words to a few lines per page, carefully arranged near colorful and easily understood images (by Charles Santoso). It would be easy to guide a young reader through the book with a finger and a pause, a finger and a pause.
The story focuses on some friends, mainly two: Rabbit, who loses a tooth, and Duck, who Rabbit writes a note about losing said tooth. Duck goes off to look for Rabbit’s lost tooth, enlisting other animal friends to help along the way.
They never find it, and go visit Rabbit to tell him. Rabbit, in turn, tells them he meant a tooth fell out. Wah wah.
In other words, all the sympathy and effort came from a verbal misunderstanding. The result is a relatively flat ending, one that undercuts all the effort in the story.
