Counting Cockatoos

Here’s a counting book with a difference. We have ‘One enormous elephant and two cockatoos’, then ‘Two tumbling tigers and two cockatoos’, then ‘Three happy hippos and two cockatoos’… On each page the cockatoos are hiding, so we have to find them. Thus we have two lots of things to count: the animals and then the two cockatoos, and a chance to compare two with other numbers. The pictures are stunning, as you would expect from Barefoot Books. The language flows sinuously and irresistibly round the tongue: ‘five languid lions’, ‘six slinking snakes’, ‘eleven elegant lizards’ – and ‘two cockatoos’ will become a chant. The counting goes to twelve, and you have a chance to count again at the end. Gorgeous.