by Mary Frost

Preschoolers in Brooklyn Friends School’s Yellow Room sat crossed-legged on the rug and listened with rapt attention as Boerum Hill author/illustrator Tad Hills, accompanied by his son Charlie, read his recently-published picture book Duck & Goose Monday morning, February 27. (Charlie’s second grade class are “buddies” with the Yellow Room preschoolers and he familiar to all of the children.)

The preschoolers quickly bonded with the book’s two lovable, slightly off-kilter characters, Duck and Goose, who had to work hard to get along—especially after they discovered what they took to be a very unusual egg.

“It is an egg,” one student in the audience said softly, overlooking the fact that the found object was larger than either bird and was covered with bright polka-dots.

The children rooted for the two birds, who became fast friends as they shared the important task of keeping the egg warm and safe—and stayed friends even after the egg turned out to be a ball.

In a Q&A after the reading (moderated by their head teacher Suzanne Stevens, with assistant teacher Debbie Prince), the children were surprisingly articulate about their favorite parts of the story.

“I liked about the book when they thought it was an egg,” said one girl. “I liked when he was standing on it,” added another. One boy wanted to know how Hills made his drawings.
“I draw them on paper,” Hills said. “I sort of play with them, then I figure out what each page has got to look like. I draw it on thicker paper and then I paint it,” he explained.

“Why did they think it was an egg?” one student asked.

“They were young, they were confused… and they really wanted it to be an egg.”

Duck & Goose is expected to be a runaway hit, with strong support from Random House as the first book published by Random House’s Schwartz and Wade Books imprint. While Tad took three years to create the story and illustrations, Duck & Goose is also very much a family effort. One idea for an illustration came from his second-grade son Charlie, said Hills. It was Charlie’s idea “to put these signs up” one two of the pages to help illustrate an idea, he said. “And my daughter Elinor (a Brooklyn Friends School fourth grader) came up with the sign that says, ‘No honking, $5 fine.’”

There’s also the fact that the “Wade” of Schwartz and Wade is Hills’ wife Lee Wade, who co-directs the imprint with fellow Brooklynite Anne Schwartz. Lee and Anne worked together for years at Simon & Schuster’s, where Lee directed the design department for the children’s division’s imprints and Anne was editorial director of Anne Schwartz Books.

Reprinted courtesy of Brooklyn Eagle Publications.

Phot Tad Hills with son Charlie reading to the Yellow Room preschoolers.