Look! It’s Baby Duck by Gabby Pritchard is a Red band reader in the Cambridge Reading Adventures series for Prep at Lahore Grammar School (LGS). The cover shows a fluffy yellow duckling paddling in blue water, with an orange beak and orange webbed feet and green grass behind. Lucy Boden is credited for the illustrations.
It is an easy book to love, with a duckling that children want to hug. For the 2027-28 session, it gives a Prep child a story with two small characters, a surprise and a lot of exclamation marks, which is exactly what a new reader needs to practise reading with expression.
What happens in the book
According to the teaching notes, Brown Mouse and Grey Mouse find out that Baby Duck can do many things, including surprising them when they get too close. A simple repeated sentence structure with well-placed changes supports one-to-one matching across three lines of text on a page. Bold text and punctuation support phrased, expressive reading. The mice take turns telling each other what Baby Duck is doing (‘The baby duck can walk,’ said Grey Mouse), and later the verb changes to ‘shouted’, which gives children a chance to look closely at print detail.
The frequent words to rehearse are ‘said’, ‘can’, ‘Look’ and ‘He’. By page 12 the mice are not hiding any more, and a question mark asks what they want to know.
What your child learns from it
The publisher’s teaching notes list these learning outcomes. A child who reads this book can:
- solve simple words by blending phonemes from left to right and check for meaning, correct syntax and sound;
- locate and read high-frequency words;
- show an understanding of the elements of stories;
- start to read in a more phrased manner while keeping track of the print.
How to read it together at home
The guided reading lesson printed in the book gives a simple routine you can follow:
- Give your child the book and read the title. Say: Grey Mouse and Brown Mouse can see Baby Duck; they want to see what he can do. Will he be able to play with them?
- Ask your child to open the cover and point to the title page, then turn to the next page.
- On pages 2 and 3, read ‘Look! It’s a baby duck’ with surprise in your voice and ask your child to copy it.
- On pages 4 and 6, notice the speech; take turns reading ‘The baby duck can walk,’ said Grey Mouse.
- On page 12, ask why the mice are not hiding any more, and notice the question mark.
Fun learning links beyond the book
For physical education, follow simple instructions to change movement: walk, jump, hop, run, just like Baby Duck. For PSHE, chart the changes we go through from baby to toddler to child, and look at photographs of your child at different ages. It is a charming way to link a book to your own family album.
About the Red band
Red band is the step where a child moves from pointing at every word to following the line with their eyes, reading phrases instead of single words.
Who, when, where and why
Whom: Prep children (about five years old). When: during the 2027-28 session, with a lot of expression. Where: at school, at home, at the park near a pond. Why: to practise reading with expression and phrasing in a funny story. Lahore Grammar School campuses follow almost the same book list, but a few campuses use their own list for some subjects. Send us your child’s campus on WhatsApp and we confirm the title before we dispatch.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the characters?
Brown Mouse, Grey Mouse and Baby Duck.
Who illustrated it?
Lucy Boden is credited on the cover.
How many lines of text are on a page?
Up to three, according to the teaching notes.
Buy Look! It’s Baby Duck from us online and pay when it reaches your door (Cash on Delivery, all over Pakistan). We also ship prepaid orders to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
