The Story About Ping is a popular children's book. First published in 1933, Ping is a colorfully illustrated story about a domesticated Chinese duck lost on the Yangtze River.
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The Story About Ping was written by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Since its first publication, it is now in its 17th edition and 23rd printing by Viking Press in hardcover and Grosset & Dunlap in paperback.
Ping is the name of a domesticated duck who lives on a riverboat on the Yangtze River in China. He gets sent out every morning to forage along the river with his relatives, and is expected back every evening. The last duck on the boat would get a swat with a stick and one day he is the last duck. He is afraid to return and spends the night on shore. When he awakens his boat is gone and he is soon caught by a boy on another boat where he worries about becoming their dinner. After some time the boy lets Ping go just as all his duck relatives are getting back on Ping's boat nearby. Ping rejoins his family and happily receives the last duck swat.
Ping has appeared on television since the 1950s. Captain Kangaroo (or his friend Mr. Greenjeans) read Ping once a week on his show for seventeen years, while displaying its colorful illustrations in stark black and white on the screen. Only Stone Soup, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and The Little Engine That Could had longer runs on the show.
Soupy Sales and Howdy Doody both featured Ping on numerous occasions, and Shari Lewis's sock puppet Lambchop once played the role of Ping in an adaptation for sock puppets and ventriloquists.
Sesame Street had an animated version that ran in the 1970's. This version featured the song Jinzhur as the background music.
A tongue-in-cheek review of this book is included in an article about the history of the ping computer program: http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html