Mrs. Goose's Baby

By Charlotte Voake

Book Overview

One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. Here, women over the age of fifty and men over sixtysingle, childless, and without jobs in progressive industriesare sequestered for their final few years; they are considered outsiders. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions: well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable. Dorrit is faced with compliance or escape, and…well, then what? THE UNIT is a gripping exploration of a society in the throes of an experiment, in which the "dispensable" ones are convinced under gentle coercion of the importance of sacrificing for the "necessary" ones. Ninni Holmqvist has created a debut novel of humor, sorrow, and rage about love, the close bonds of friendship, and about a cynical, utilitarian way of thinking disguised as care. From the Trade Paperback edition.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076360092X
• ISBN13: 9780763600921
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Candlewick
• Length: 24 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 7.5"
• Age Range: 3 to 6 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 1

Customer Reviews

A must buy for parents of adopted children

My mother used to read this book all the time to me as a little kid and told me how I was adopted, so I feel really sentimental about this book. I think everyone who adopts a child should read this to him or her, it's a lovely story. It's much better than finding out when you're a teenager or adult. It really eliminates the confusion, because my mom would always tell me that even though I came from another mommy's belly, she would still love me exactly the same.

When a Goose Loves a Chicken

This book has one of the most perfect opening sentences in the English language: "One day Mrs. Goose found an egg and made a nest to put it in." What better mystery in a children's book than an egg? We know that *something* will hatch out of it, but what comes out of found eggs can be entirely unpredictable. And what better creature to find the egg than Mrs. Goose, who sensibly builds it a nest and sets out to protect it. Mrs. Goose certainly isn't worried about what will emerge from the mystery egg. Mrs. Goose, a comfortable, loving, sensible sort of mother sits on the egg and dreams of a little goose swimming behind her. The egg hatches, Mrs. Goose sees her not-very-goose-like baby, and two pink hearts surround her heart-felt "Honk." All Mrs. Goose ever says is "Honk", but she says it expressively, whether she is calling her child for a swim (the chick doesn't like water), or chasing off a dog from her baby, or watching her baby eat grain instead of grass. Voake's illustrations leave us in no doubt about these nuanced honks. Only once does Mrs. Goose look at her baby closely, but it is with no concern, and it is the narrator (not Mrs. Goose) who notes that the baby is not much like the mother. At night Mrs. Goose and her baby curl up together lovingly. During the day, children watch them walk together lovingly. And the narrator finally tells us what we already know -- "Mrs. Goose's baby was a CHICKEN!" We don't need to be told that the differences between them don't matter a whit to Mrs. Goose. Nor does the grownup reader need to be told that this is a book about adopted children. The text, illustrations, and love in this book, however, transcend the genre of book-for-adopted-kids. All children worry about being different from their parents and about whether or not their parents will love them in spite of these differences. *Mrs. Goose's Baby* belongs on everyone's shelf -- it has as much heart as any book I've read.