Author and illustrator Robert McCloskey died today. He was 88. Last year on the Vision Forum Ministries Faith & Freedom Tour, we stopped on the Boston Commons to pay homage to this much beloved author whose landmark children’s book, Make Way for Ducklings, is memorialized in a series of distinguished bronze statues depicting momma duck leading her children across the very spot detailed in the book. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Amy Finnerty commented this week: “...there is something vaguely depressing about much current children’s literature. One remedy for parents who wish to protect their kids from the bland and the preachy is to pull out a passed-down edition of Make Way for Ducklings (1941), Blueberries for Sal (1948) or One Morning in Maine (1952), all by the author and illustrator Robert McCloskey... In the pages of these classic works, in the expressive, monochrome drawings, there is no Big Sociological Message, forced sunniness or sentimentality, but rather the gentle but sharply observed depiction of children’s — or ducklings’ — dilemmas, regional landscapes and midcentury American cities.”