Tuesday Storytime: Counting with Ducks

And yes, there are enough duck books in the picture book world for there to be a three-book storytime specifically about ducks and counting.

Nine Ducks Nine (previously reviewed here)
Sarah Hayes
ISBN: 9780763638160
9 watercolor ducks hatch a plan to outwit a pursuing fox through an idyllic countryside.

This is essentially the same story as Do Like a Duck Does (Hindley and Bates, 2002 Candlewick hardcover ISBN: 0763616680), where a family of ducks outwit a fox and the fox ends up taking a swim.  To be perfectly honest, I like the cadence and the illustrations of that story better than this one.  But, this one has numbers and counting, and this one is also a longer read.

Quack and Count
Keith Baker  (Big Fat Hen, 1994 HMH hardcover ISBN: 9780152928698)
ISBN: 0152928588
Colorful and textural collages (even the words!) follow permutations of 7 ducklings.

I've used Baker's Big Fat Hen in a counting storytime before, and he's a stunningly talented artist.  This is less a counting book, and more of a math concepts book, but whatever.  It totally counts.  We start with 7 ducklings all together, and then Baker creates a clever series of rhymes for each sum of seven: starting with "Slipping, sliding, having fun / 7 ducklings, 6 plus 1."  Then 5 + 2, 4 + 3, and so on.  What's fun is to compare the different scenes with reversed sums: so we also have "7 ducklings, 1 plus 6 / In the water playing tricks" to compare with the first rhyme.  The pages are all in full spreads, with the seven ducks divided up between the two pages to match the sum in question.  Really pretty book, and really clever concept.

Five Little Ducks
from the nursery song, illustrated by Ivan Bates
ISBN: 0439746930
Colored pencils and watercolors. Bright expressive characters foregrounded against soft scenery.

Ivan Bates is a beautiful illustrator, and I love his work so much.  I try not have repeats of an author or an illustrator within a storytime, which is the other reason I didn't choose Do Like a Duck Does for this trio.  This is a simple illustration of the first verse of the rhyme, but there's a cute little story hidden within the illustrations about just why the ducklings aren't coming back each time.  So adorable.


This ended up being on the very short end on things, but I actually try to choose shorter sets of books for the early fall.  Families are coming in with their younger kids only (the older ones have headed off to preschool or kindie) and without the older kids to model good storytime behavior, it's harder for the little ones (and to be totally honest, the parents) to keep from squiggling around like mad.  This is the sort of thing you figure out over time, watching the pattern repeat every fall, and you just learn to work around it - shorter stories, more obvious transitions, really expressive stories with very narrative illustrations.