Bibliographic record
Abstract
Castellucci, Cecil. Odd Duck. Illus. Sara Varon. New York: First Second Books, 2013. Print.Theodora is an eclectic, routine-regimented duck that swims with a teacup on her head to maintain perfect posture, eats uncommon food items like fruit salsa, and reads books that haven’t been signed out of the library in years. Constellations are one of Theodora’s interests and every night she wishes, on the first star she sees, that nothing in her blissful life would ever change. In Theodora’s eyes she is a normal duck who lives a very ordinary life.Theodora’s peaceful life is interrupted when a duck named Chad moves in next door. His lack of manners, carefree attitude and messiness scare, but also intrigue, Theodora. As winter approaches and the other ducks migrate south, Theodora counts down the days until Chad departs. However, Chad foils Theodora’s hopes of a return to normalcy by staying home for the winter, just like her. She continues to ignore Chad and carries on with her daily routine when, one night, Chad invites Theodora to look at the stars through his telescope. Through their love of constellations, Theodora realizes Chad might be the friend she has secretly yearned for.The two ducks’ friendship blossoms until, while walking through town, they hear another duck snicker and remark “Look at that odd duck!” The comment sparks an argument between the friends that leaves them angry and estranged. Is this the end of their friendship, or will both accept themselves and each other as the odd ducks that they are?This is an excellent beginner graphic story to share with primary aged students around themes of friendship, acceptance and self-awareness. The text panels are easy to follow and readers will love the wacky humour and amusing side notes utilized throughout the story. The soft pastels used by Sara Varon in her illustrations really bring the story to life and there are plenty of beautiful hidden details in the images that are sure to visually stimulate the reader. Overall, this is a brilliant book that emphasizes the importance of getting to know people before making judgements and addresses issues of self-image and the effects of stereotypes.Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Jackie HeinrichJackie Heinrich is the teacher-librarian at Wiltse Elementary School in Penticton, BC. She is currently working towards her Masters of Education Degree in Teacher Librarianship and enjoys helping students become lifelong readers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.282 | 0.256 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".