“Agnes Pere­grine, the young daugh­ter of a not­ed ornithol­o­gist, has many tal­ents, the most impres­sive of which is bird­call­ing. A nat­ur­al mim­ic, she sum­mons com­mon and exot­ic species alike with her chirps and war­bles. The World Bird Soci­ety learns of her prowess and elects to send Agnes and her moth­er to the Himalayas in search of the exceed­ing­ly rare pink-head­ed duck. The prob­lem is that no one knows what sounds it makes. ‘Then I’d bet­ter get quack­ing,’ replies the deter­mined young­ster. Agnes inad­ver­tent­ly imi­tates the bird’s call and suc­ceeds in attract­ing the elu­sive spec­i­men. As it turns out, the unscrupu­lous Colonel Edwin Pittsnap is also cov­etous of the duck and pro­ceeds to steal it. Not sat­is­fied, he demands that Agnes call some more birds for his col­lec­tion. So she does … a lot more, all of which swarm and dive at the evil Pittsnap, send­ing him flee­ing down the moun­tain in ter­ror. Tak­en alone, this under­stat­ed sto­ry may fall into the feath­er­weight cat­e­go­ry, but in con­junc­tion with its whim­si­cal water­col­ors, this pic­ture book is some­thing to sing about. Pot­ter’s palette is pre­dom­i­nate­ly earth tones and her sig­na­ture elon­gat­ed fig­ures are par­tic­u­lar­ly expres­sive giv­en the econ­o­my of line. Any­one look­ing for a plucky hero­ine, a humor­ous eco-adven­ture, a sat­is­fy­ing theme of greed being van­quished, and some glo­ri­ous art­work should con­sid­er giv­ing Agnes a caw.” (Luann Toth, School Library Jour­nal)