“When sev­en hun­gry chicks cry for food, Mama Bird hap­pi­ly ven­tures into the dan­ger­ous world to retrieve a bit of nour­ish­ment. The bad news? That still leaves six hun­gry chicks. So out she goes again, this time for a cher­ry, then a bread crust. With each return, the unfed chicks get increas­ing­ly riled, while the har­ried moth­er gets increas­ing­ly exhaust­ed. Though Fleming’s rhyming scheme is ambi­tious, it’s iron­clad in its meter and well posi­tioned upon the page. Young lis­ten­ers will be chant­i­ng along almost imme­di­ate­ly: “Four hun­gry babies fret, sulk, and pout. ‘Feed us! Feed us!’ the lit­tle ones shout. / ‘Hush, you lit­tle egg-crack­ers,’ Mama Bird coos, ‘and I’ll fly to the gar­den to find you more food.” The count­down ele­ment is irre­sistible — the num­ber of hun­gry chicks decreas­es right along with Mama Bird’s ener­gy. Though the gouache art is a lit­tle plain, it humor­ous­ly returns to the same com­po­si­tion for each round of feed­ing. Just the thing to turn a large-group read-aloud into a fren­zied chick­en coop. (Daniel Krause, Book­list)