10 Little Rubber Ducks

Based on a news article about thousands of rubber ducks that went adrift after falling from a cargo ship, Eric Carle imagines ten of the toys briefly encountering real marine animals. And that's it.

A fine example of Carle's art, but the story is a big nothing.

This was a must have Eric Carle book for us.....my 7 yr old being rubber duck obsessed. I enjoy the fact that Carle based this off of real life events and named the ship after his wife....and of course, the illustrations are classic Carle style. I don't understand the need for the repetitious last lines on some pages....unless this is meant for singing?? But, otherwise, we really enjoy this one.

A box containing 10 toy ducks falls off a cargo ship, releasing its contents into the ocean. The rubber ducks each drift off in different directions, encountering various ocean animals along the way.

As this book was written when I was already an adult, it is an Eric Carle title that I had no previous knowledge of when I saw it on a local library's shelves. I picked it up on a whim, thinking it might work as yet another counting book I could share with my toddler class. While it does serve that purpose, it is much, much more. The book jacket notes how it serves as an introduction/reinforcement of cardinal and ordinal numbers, allows for exploration of directional words (i.e., up, down, right, left), and provides "a very simple first view show more of biology and geography" through the featured sea animals in their various habitats. Though not noted by the publishers, the book can also be used for discussing basic economic concepts regarding production as it begins with the ducks being manufactured on an assembly line before being packaged and shipped "to faraway countries." Yet all of this learning is not forced but rather presented in an entertaining way.

Carle notes that he wrote the book based on a newspaper clipping describing a 1992 shipment of bath toys being lost at sea, which is a interesting tidbit on so many levels. Another clever Easter egg is that Carle named the cargo ship in his book "Bobbie," the name of his wife. The book's text actually flows all the way to the back cover, where a "press here" button elicits a squeak from one of the rubber ducks. This is not a selling point per se, but it is an extra bonus to an already fun and educational book. show less

This book was for children in Kindergarden and 1st grade. It was about ten rubber ducks who go overboard off of the ship they were on. The ten rubber ducks all end up in different places throughout the ocean. One is with a dolphin, one is with a polar bear, and the last one is all alone. It is very interesting because it is an original concept. I enjoyed it and recommend it to kids because I enjoyed the cause and effect of the story. As well as, the message which is how the same situation effects everyone differently. All ten rubber ducks were in the ocean, but all of them ended up in totally different places.

This is not a great book. The concept of rubber ducks getting lost at sea, but the text has bizarre repetition, and some of the ideas don't really make sense. However, my two year old enjoyed it and asked for it many times. It is good for teaching counting and ordinal numbers.

This is weird to say, but I was not so impressed with this book. The ends of some sentences were repeated to uncertain effect; the first four ducks float north/east/south/west, but the next ones float left/right/up/down, and the final ones "this way" and "that way." Huh?

Loved the illustrations of course. Grown-ups will want to read Moby-Duck for the full story.

A shipment of rubber ducks falls into the middle of the ocean. The ten ducks drift their separate ways and encounter various animals found in and around oceans around the world. This might have been charming had I not just read Tracking Trash, which describes the true story of the lost shipment of tub toys that Carle's book is based on. I kept picturing the various animals swallowing the toy ducks and dying from impaction. Maybe kids will find the story to be cute, but I wasn't impressed.