Heidi Hart

My wife's childhood copy of this classic arrived in our house a few months ago when my father-in-law moved house. Tonight, my four-year-old pulled it out of the bookshelf for the first time. He looked at it and started to put it back when I stopped him. 

"Why not that one?" I asked. 

"It looks boring. There's no colors [in the pictures]," he complained. 

I assured him that Make Way for Ducklings is a pretty great book even without colored pictures. I told him that I remembered that story from when I was little, and that Papa and Grammy probably remembered it from when they were little, too, because it's an old story, but so good that people keep telling it. 

He brought it up to bed and agreed we should give it a try. He liked that all the quacking and the way the policemen helped the ducks cross the street, and he was excited when I told him that we can go to Boston and see the duck sculpture in the Public Gardens.

When I tucked him in and left him for the night, he was quacking himself to sleep...