Dirty Birdies

Five birds of different shapes and sizes count off and clean up. 

The first dirty birdie, with long, ostrichlike legs and yellow-spotted blue feathers, dirties itself in a mud puddle and then meets another birdie, a green, ducklike bird that’s splotched with paint. The number of “dirty birdies” increases with an “exploring birdie,” a “digging birdie,” and a “snacking birdie,” while the simple text enumerates and adds them. The birdies get cleaned up in a giant bathtub only for the crew to be tempted afterward to frolic in a dirty puddle to chase a butterfly. The final double-page spread encourages readers to count the birdies in a variety of ways (“How many short dirty birdies are there?”). To form her droll and highly animated creations, it looks as though Sattler took a few iconic cartoon birds and put them in a blender with a muted color palette to arrive at these beasties. The companion title, Jungle Gym, features a monkey, a rhinoceros, a zebra, and several other wild animals who demonstrate prepositions and their opposites in a child’s playground. For comic effect, the snake wraps itself around the tire swing, and the giraffe sticks its head through a tunnel.

Part counting book, part tribute to messy good times, Sattler's exuberant board book introduces five goofy-looking, none-too-clean birds. A long-legged, polka-dotted bird can't resist a muddy puddle; it then heads indoors where a tiny green duck is going wild with purple paint ("1 dirty birdie meets 1 painting birdie"). More birds arrive, they get cleaned up (after a communal bath, they're dried off by industrial fans that leave them fluffier than ever), but all five are soon right back in the mud. Closing questions for readers encourage additional counting ("How many blue dirty birdies are there?"), emphasizing the concepts that underlie this giggly tale. Simultaneously available: Jungle Gym. Up to age 5. Agent: Anna Olswanger, Olswanger Literary. (Feb.)