Hooray for birds! by Lucy Cousins

Candlewick Press, 2017. ISBN 9780763692650
(Age: 3-7) Highly recommended. Can you imagine just for one day you're a busy bird? Lucy Cousins invites her young audience to visualise themselves as beautiful birds in this wonderfully bold and engaging picture book. She begins at dawn with the rooster's cry and ends at night with the brightly coloured owl's 'Tuwit tuwoo!' Set against solid bright backgrounds, each painted bird displays vibrant plumage inside strong black outlines. Cousins understands the use of contrasting and complimentary colours and the use of simple shapes and design.
Her rhyming text is easy to read to little ones, the bold letters flow across the page, moving up and down with the swimming swan and swooping up, down and around like the starlings. The gorgeous pink flamingo, invites us to 'Stand very tall on just one leg' as the text stretches to emphasize his stance. In a read aloud story circle, a kindergarten or library setting, young listeners can actively participate, predicting the rhyming text and waddling like a penguin, running like an ostrich or cuddling like a parrot in the nest.
From the popular author of the Maisy series, Cousins' Hooray for Birds is a wonderfully engaging picture book that can lead into extension activities in art, dramatic play and science - the basic needs of living things.
Rhyllis Bignell