Make Way For Ducklings

Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)

If you want evidence of the deep rot that has infested the once-great Caldecott Medal, look no further than this book, which is a putrid example of ham-handed message fiction given an award by Feminazi SJWs basically as a participation prize for having a “strong female protagonist who doesn’t need a man”.

This story is set in the liberal heaven of Boston, Taxachusetts and the action—what action there is—centers around what I am sure is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle called the Public Garden Lagoon. Where in the enumerated powers of the Constitution does it say that the government has the power to fund a garden, I ask you? If the people of Boston want a park so badly they should come together and pay for one, but taxation is armed robbery at gunpoint.

The characters in this book are a family of immigratory birds who come to America and immediately have eight babies. The woman duck is no lady and has no respect for her husband’s position as head of the duck household. She finds fault with everything he does, when he tries to make a home for her nothing will do but the finest castle apparently.

Even when they are given a handout of free peanuts (they aren’t free, though, because somebody paid for them. TANSTAAFL!) at the taxpayer-supported park, they have to leave because Mrs. Mallard thinks the world revolves around her and doesn’t think she should have to watch where she’s going when there are bicycles around. Pay attention because this is going to be a running theme. If Mr. Mallard has put her in his place the first time this foolishness arose, the worst excess of this book would have been avoided. But then if he knew how to be a proper alpha duck this book would have been a lot shorter.

So the ducks leave the city and they have their eight babies on an island in the river, but Mr. Mallard has had enough of his wife’s bullshit and decides to go his own way, swimming up the river. The shrew of a duck extorts a promise from him to meet her at the park (remember, the one she decided was bullshit?) in a week. If Mr. Mallard was me, he would have said, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” and never looked back. Take the red pill wake up, Mr. Mallard. A better title for this book would be “Make Way For Cucklings” because Mr. Mallard is clearly a beta male cuck of the lowest degree.

The book makes a big deal out of the fact that Mrs. Mallard teaches the ducklings how to swim and stuff by herself, like this isn’t her job. Well, if single motherhood is so great, why did she need a policeMAN to stop her kids from being ran over by cars when she tried to lead them across the highway? Or was it misogyny to notice that?

This book goes from bad to worse as this deadbeat duck wants to go back to the public park to suckle peanuts at the hand of the public teat, but she decided to molt and have babies so oh no she can’t fly anymore, a police officer—that’s a public servant whose salary is paid by taxes—actually STOPS TRAFFIC on a busy highway.

He even calls for backup! Apparently, it’s not enough that one jackass is being paid to stop people with jobs from getting to and from work! Mrs. Mallard is such a special snowflake that they have to send out a cruiser to escort her! Are we supposed to believe that there’s no crime in Boston? Or maybe the police just aren’t allowed to bother with that anymore. We must interfere with anyone’s ~*civil rights*~ after all.

Who pays Mr. Police Man’s salary, I ask you? Is it ducks? Do ducks pay his salary? No! We do! So why is he doing their bidding? In any rational society he would have stood back and let natural selection do its work but we are far past the point of rationality here. Mrs. Unfit Mother and her brood have a goddamn pride parade up and down the streets of Boston where all the slack-jawed liberal idiots can admire what a special snowflake she is and congratulate her on having so many children she needs a police escort to control them!

Why doesn’t she just open a Patreon account while she’s at it? She could tell the sob story about how she was almost hit by a bicycle and the victim bucks would come pouring in, let me tell you. They all have Patreons for some reason even though they produce nothing of value to anyone. It’s nothing but welfare for hipsters. It should be illegal.

And when she gets to the park, Mr. Mallard is waiting for her. Of course he is. She has him so whipped. I threw the book across the room when I got to that part. The story was clearly set up to lead in one direction, where the precious little snowflake figures out that in the real world no one has to put up with her bullshit and the price she pays for whining and crying victim all the time is winding up alone, but the author caved to the SJW bullies and totally undid everything he had been building up to in order to shoehorn in their approved message. It broke the immersion completely. I knew it was coming, but until I saw it on the page I didn’t want to believe it.

But blue pill beta cuck or not, notice that Mr. Mallard didn’t need any police escort to find his way there. He didn’t need any recognition from the town. He just did what he said he would do, quietly and without demanding any special treatment or a parade. And yet we’re supposed to think the mother is the hero of the story? This is some SJW bullshit of the first degree.

This book is the biggest piece of crap I have ever read, and the Caldecott Medal on the cover of it shows that this once prestigious award has been degraded to little more than a shiny piece of toilet paper.

It should come as no surprise that the people of Boston love this book so much they literally built a statue to it. It’s like something out of the Bible story with the golden calf. Do you think the Boston SJWs would have cared about this book if it had been set in some place like Salt Lake City or Wasilla? Hell no! But it’s like I always say: they only care about demographics. The Caldecott Medal is supposed to be an award for children’s picture books, not illustrated love-letters to liberal bastions, which is what this is.

The fact that this book was lavished with so much praise just because it kissed Boston’s ass seriously calls into question the legitimacy of any award it was given. If we can’t know for sure it wasn’t affirmative action and favoritism, we have no reason to believe it wasn’t, and that’s the same thing as proof.

Did you know that only fifteen people in all the world choose the winner of the Caldecott every year? How are the opinions of fifteen people supposed to determine “most distinguished American picture book for children”, I ask you? The fifteen people are appointed by the so-called Association for Library Services for Children, or ALSC. What do you want to bet that some or all of those appointees come from Boston or similarly liberal cities? The ALSC is a division of the notoriously pro-liberal American Library Association, or ALA. If you want to know who they answer to, just spot the pattern: ALSC, ALA, Alinsky.

Follow the money. I guarantee it.

Two stars.