“There once was a duck who had the bad luck to live with a lazy old farmer. The duck did the work. The farmer stayed all day in bed.” That is Martin Waddell's opening, printed on the book's first spread, and it is the whole setup. The farmer is waited on where he lies, and the book turns on one question called out from under the covers and the duck's patient, exhausted answer.

Then the cow and the sheep and the hens hold a meeting in the barn, and what they do about it is one of the most satisfying endings in a picture book. Children who cannot read yet still join in out loud by the third page, because Martin Waddell built the text to be chanted.

Helen Oxenbury's watercolors are why it has lasted. The duck is drawn with real feeling, small and soaked and worn down, and the farmer is comic without ever being cruel, so a story about unfairness stays gentle enough for bedtime. This printing carries the gold twenty-fifth anniversary seal on its cover.

Paperback, 40 pages, 9.13 by 9.88 in. Written by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. Candlewick Press, 2017. ISBN-13 9780763695613. Publisher age guidance: 3 to 7 years.

Both makers are already on this shelf. Martin Waddell also wrote Owl Babies, the story of three owlets waiting in the dark for their mother, and Helen Oxenbury illustrated We're Going on a Bear Hunt: My First Words Book for the youngest readers.