Bush birthday by Lorette Broekstra

Bush birthday. ISBN 9781925267051
Bush bedtime. ISBN 9781925267068
Allen and Unwin, 2018
(Age: 1-4) Themes: Counting. This is a new range of books featuring a cast of ten Australian bush baby animals. The same cute, fluffy baby animals with oversized heads and big eyes appear in both of the books and the stories are short, playful and colourful. They cleverly explore language and counting concepts and are therefore perfect for early childhood settings.
Bush bedtime counts from one to ten (ONE climbs up the tree, And TWO climb down, etc.) and also features positional and directional words (up, down, through, out, on, between, behind, by, in, at). The number words and the focus vocabulary words are in a different colour to encourage beginning word awareness. The story begins with one animal setting out on a journey and on each page another animal joins the group. At the end of the book all of the animals find themselves at the billabong for platypus's birthday party.
Bush bedtime is opposite in that it counts backwards from ten to one. It is a take on the classic rhyme Ten in the Bed, however, this version starts off with "There are TEN out of bed". One by one, the animals get sleepy so as "NINE crawl low" kookaburra sneaks off to bed and as "TWO climb on the bed" wallaby tucks himself in. Once "There are TEN in the bed, It's time to say... Goodnight!"
The animals are all smiley and having oodles of fun, making music, bouncing high and dancing. This title also features adjectives (low, high, loud, quiet, big, small), which are bolded and made to look like their meaning (e.g. "high" is stretched upwards, while "low" is stretched out sideways).
Nicole Nelson