The Number One Aussie Counting Book (Heath McKenzie, Black Dog Books, $14.99 pb, ISBN 9781742030098, April) ****

Counting books, like alphabet books, have always served as showcases for the talents of illustrators. McKenzie has produced The Aussie A to Z and achieved outstanding sales with The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas. His counting book has stylised angular figures, with beads for eyes, cavorting across the pages like plush toys on steroids. The spread design is superb: for example, the curving tails of the ‘three lilting lyrebirds’ are echoed in the curving line of the text, and the later, crowded spreads show myriads of tiny creatures frenetically jostling each other to gain a foothold on the page. Much of the appeal lies in these acrobatics: creatures such as kookaburras and echidnas fall from branches, play leapfrog or perch precariously on each others’ heads. The vocabulary, too, is full of pyrotechnics with its strings of adjectives, some of which will send even adults to the dictionary. Like McKenzie’s bilbies, the whole is ‘stylish, hip and accomplished’ and will be snapped up by trendy uncles and grandparents of a patriotic bent, as well as tourists. I find the book sharp and greeting-card-like, more ‘bouncy, bubbly, frisky and agile’ like the kangaroos than ‘warm-hearted, friendly and companionable’ like the dingoes, but am sure it will sell like the hot cakes being whipped up by the ‘eight cool kookaburras’.

Robin Morrow is a former bookseller

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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