Library Book of the Week: Counting Birds

So after I put together my "baby reference library" box, I decided to expand on the theme box idea and put together boxes for the alphabet and numbers. In addition to alphabet and counting books, I included foam letters and numbers, links for counting, etc. I quickly same that there is a strong household bias toward alphabet books instead of counting books, so I made a point to get some more counting books when we visited the Culver City branch of the County of Los Angeles Library (not to be confused with the city of Los Angeles Public Library system) this weekend.

Anyway, I found this lovely British book published by the Tate Gallery in England called Counting Birds. It's veddy veddy British, but I love the whimsy (some of the birds are birds in a baby's mobile or birds on the pot of afternoon tea), and Alice Melvin's illustration style. In particular, her geese remind me of my beloved Provensens. Long story short, Jackson and I both really liked these. Jackson told me that crows say "caw-caw" while we were looking at it tonight, which is the first time that he's revealed he knows this information (he learned it from Good-Night Owl! by Pat Hutchins, not to mention our local, very active murder of crows). He also liked looking for extra objects, like a picture of an owl or a cat sleeping on a couch. In addition to the great textured illusrations, I loved the lyricis, which makes it fun for me to read in between counting, counting, counting. (I count from one to whatever number is on every page, so there's a lot of good repetition.

Anyway, I'm going to look for more storybooks that count to 20, because I read somewhere that the way the "teens" are set up can be confusing to kids for a while (the number names become regular after 20), and I hope I find more books like this!