Timothy and his father and mother live in a quiet valley. It’s too far away from the woods to hear the crows calling all day, too far from the bigger valley to hear the trains rolling by, and streetcars and buses don’t go that far.
The little family loves their quiet valley, but sometimes Timothy wishes he had a pet. Timothy’s father worries that a dog would chase away the quiet rabbits, and his mother fears a cat would drive the birds away. Timothy doesn’t think a canary or goldfish would be any fun.
Once a year the quiet valley is too much for Timothy and his mother and father, so they make the trip to the fair, “for what is noisier than a fair?” Timothy’s favorite thing to do at the fair is to ride the Ferris wheel. Sometimes, “he rode it thirty times in succession.”
But when Timothy arrives at the fair, the Ferris wheel isn’t running! While he’s wondering what could be wrong with his favorite ride, Timothy gets pulled into helping a woman who is trying to win a duck in a ring toss game. He rings a duck with the woman’s last hoop, but it is not the duck she wanted. He has won the noisiest duck in the tank. The woman refuses to take the duck and the man running the ring-toss game refuses to take the duck back.
The duck will not stop quacking loudly. Timothy is embarrassed and not welcome anywhere he wants to go at the fair. While navigating the fairgrounds with the duck, Timothy makes two discoveries. When he is nearly trampled by the crowd, he realizes what things look like to the duck when it is on the ground. He promises:
I won’t put you down again to be stepped on and squashed. I won’t get rid of you. I didn’t know it was like that down there.
Later, when the Ferris wheel seems to be running again, Timothy and the duck get stuck at the top.
Up above, the duck on the seat whispered excited little whispers to Timothy. He liked it far above the noise of all the crowd. He was glad to be away from all that noise. He flapped his wings and whispered. He quirked and jerked his stubby tail. He was proud to be so high.
Timothy’s mother is terrified when she realizes Timothy is the boy stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel. Of course, the man who runs the ride is able to get him down before too long, but then Timothy’s father is outraged that the ring-toss man forced Timothy to keep the duck, so he tries to make the man take the duck back. Above all the uproar, Timothy is finally able to explain to both his parents that the duck just wants quiet and that Timothy wants to take him home.
Throughout Timothy’s adventure, several people think the duck has brought them luck. In the end, Timothy is lucky to have a pet, and the duck is lucky to have found a quiet home.
I just happened to find this out-of-print book in a pile of free books. I had never heard of it and, at first, it seemed like it was going to be a trite “boy needs a pet” story. One thing I love about it is the way that, through an accident, Timothy learns to see the world from another point of view. He also learns a little about the selflessness necessary to care for a helpless creature. I love ducks, but I particularly love this one, because it is an introvert like I am. I wish I had a duck that would whisper to me and sleep contentedly on my doorstep with my shoestring in its bill.
This book falls somewhere between picture book and chapter book. It is fifty-seven pages long, and there is an illustration on approximately every other page, but there are also several two-page spreads of print only.
Good Luck Duck is expensive online, and it is not available on Internet Archive. But maybe one day you will find it waiting for you at a bookstore or garage sale. Grab it!