1 - 2 - 3 Bird! product reviews

My son has not long started as a new entrant at school and he just loves reading and having books read to him, lately books that he can join in with like counting books or look and find books have been very popular as he is picking up new learning that allows him to interact with the story. This counting style book 1-2-3 Bird was absolutely a perfect pick for him as it had his favourite thing Birds and he got to count along with the story showing his skills as he finger pointed as he counted each bird and recognized the numbers that accompanied each page.

We loved looking at all the NZ native birds like the Kea, and the Morepork, and Kiwi there were lots more but those were probably the favourites although we had a big giggle at the Penguins in their swimming costumes at the pool. The story is beautifully illustrated and we had so much to look at on each page checking out what the birds were doing and what was happening in the background. There were a few typical kiwi things you could find in the pictures if you looked carefully which I thought was very clever and made this book stand out as a very well written book for young New Zealanders as not only does it have our native birds but it has some distinctly kiwi items too.

Dave Gunson has done a great job not only creating the book with a little rhyme for each bird but the illustrations are beautiful. I love the watercolour effect he has used to create the birds. We loved looking at the final page and seeing some of the sparrows unfinished in their colour, with the artist holding his brush as if he is still painting. I think the counting on this page was a little more of a challenge but we had fun counting the bigger number to find out how many sparrows there were.

Also included in the back of the book is a little chart of extra things you can go back through the book and find, although we had spotted and talked about some of these it was exciting to go back through the book finding each thing on the list. From weta's to butterflies, and spiders there are lots of hidden creatures waiting for you to find them making this book very fun to explore!

This is the kind of book that the tamariki I teach just love - every time we read it we find something else we haven't before. Dave Gunson has done an amazing job, the text is simple and the kind of story the tamariki will learn to say themselves and the pictures are amazing. So much detail, but reasonably simple at the same time if that makes sense. They aren't full of bright colours, but rather he has used lots of natural colours so the pictures are very life like.

I really enjoy New Zealand books featuring New Zealand wildlife. In this book we got to meet some New Zealand birds from a seagull, four pukeko and some sleepy moreporks to some pretty parakeets and lots and lots of sparrows. As I turned each page the tamariki tried to identify each of the birds. As predicted, they were able to name some, but not all of them. During future readings they tried to recall what I said each of the species was.

It wasn't until we were about half way through reading the book for the first time that we noticed a little feature in each of the pictures. If you look carefully at one picture, on the left it features the birds that were on the page before, and on the right hiding somewhere are the birds that feature on the next page. As soon as we figured this out we had to go back and look at all of the pages just to make sure we had it right! And we certainly did. This meant it gave the tamariki a little sneak peak into what was coming on the next page and they started trying to figure it out before I had turned the page. There were also so many other things to point out - bugs and creepy crawlies and lots of other quirky things.

This book is based around counting, each page counts up a number. The tamariki loved to count each of the birds, and then we even ended up counting lots of the other things we could find. Our first read of this book took near on 20 minutes and it wasn't until we got to the end that we found the list of all the other objects to find and how many of them there are through the book. We have since spent time exploring this book in small groups which has allowed the tamariki to search for some of these other animals and insects within the book. This is definitely a favourite puka puka that will be read many a time for as long as we have the book!