Counting Birds

This ornamental counting book features softly rhyming couplets that describe birds—real and manufactured—as they appear from dawn to dusk. One noisy cockerel's “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” stirs a sleepy house awake (“Three flying ducks, in a decorative row,/ are suddenly bathed in the bright morning glow”). Melvin's intricate ink illustrations create beguiling composition on each page, from the “nine handsome peacocks” strutting in striking blues and orange to the 17 starlings that gather on an shingled rooftop, “safe from the claws of the tortoiseshell cat.” Playfully sophisticated, like an afternoon tea party. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)