A Duckling Called Button

Helen Peters's A Duckling Called Button is a heart-melting farm story for 7 year olds about two friends, a clutch of orphaned eggs and one very determined little duckling.

What happens

Jasmine lives on Oak Tree Farm, where her dad keeps sheep and her mum is a vet. She's out with Tom, her best friend, checking the pregnant ewes when they spot a terrier off its lead. It belongs to Bella Bradley, the most annoying girl in their class. Before they can stop it, the dog has a mother duck in its mouth.

The duck was nesting. Down by the river Jasmine and Tom find what's left of her nest, with four pale green eggs still warm inside. Jasmine checks the smashed ones and sees the little red spots with spidery veins. The ducklings are already growing!

Mum wants to take the eggs to the wildlife rescue centre. But Tom has quietly rung his aunty Angela, who turns up at the door with an incubator. So the eggs go into Jasmine's bedroom.

What follows is a proper crash course in hatching ducklings. Jasmine and Tom learn to shine a torch through the shells to see what's growing (it's called candling). They number the eggs in pencil and turn them by hand. And they learn that a duckling will think the first moving thing it sees is its mum. So guess who needs to be in the room at the right moment?

Jasmine's little brother Manu provides the chaos. His friend Ben has the idea that you can sit on an egg to hatch it, and Manu tries it. It does not go well (Jasmine is SO cross).

A little heads-up for animal lovers. The mother duck dies in the very first chapter. One egg gets squashed and another has to be thrown away. The first duckling to hatch doesn't survive, and Jasmine cries herself to sleep before they bury it in the garden. It's all handled gently, with Mum there to say it wasn't anyone's fault. But a child who gets very upset about animals dying might find those chapters hard.

Then Button pecks his way out and looks straight at Jasmine, and the book turns sunny again. He follows her around the house, sits on her lap at mealtimes and drinks out of her glass. If you've got a reader who loves real farm detail and animals with personality, they'll adore him.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Jasmine's animal adventures start with A Piglet Called Truffle. That's where she finds a runt half the size of its brothers and sisters shivering under the straw on a neighbour's farm.