Crowds of Creatures

The duo behind Wild Backyard, On the Farm, and other books presents a sumptuously illustrated primer on collective animal nouns, featuring six creatures. Riggs’s rhyming narration covers land, sea, and sky (“A flock of geese flies to nest./ A colony of ants works without rest”), and Dogi’s richly detailed animal portraits are elegantly framed against white backdrops: three lions in a pride scatter up dust as they race across one spread, while a pod of dolphins frolics in churning turquoise water. It’s a lovely, small-scale introduction to the sometimes surprising language assigned to groups of animals. Ages 2–4. (Mar.)