Busy Little Creatures

Books that help children to count from one to ten are common. Many are pretty unimaginative, almost indistinguishable and often rely on alliterative cliches such as two tadpoles, four fish, six serpents and so on. This book is quite different. It cleverly tackles four themes at once; numbers, colours, verbs and common animals. The selected creatures are insects and other invertebrates that children are most likely to find in their gardens, reinforcing the identification, naming and observation of these. Each animal has its behavioural characteristics described; hovering dragonflies, meandering millipedes, waggling bees, marching ants and so forth, introducing interesting and quite advanced words to infant readers as well as accurate rudiments of animal behaviour. Colours are well matched to the featured animals. The multicoloured beetle is a gem. The book is beautiful. Fiona Bowden has created her small menagerie from cut-outs of charmingly patterned paper, embellished with hand-drawn elements. The book's careful design allows it to be read either to teach any one of the four themes or include all of them together. Hard and soft covered versions are available, but the latter has the added bonus of attractive endpapers where the animals and their names are shown together. Each book ends with a double page spread of all the creatures in a lovely garden. These two pages alone would make a great bedroom poster for any young child. Dr Rob Morrison