Birdsong by the Billabong (Maura Finn, illus Cate James, Affirm)

Birdsong by the Billabong—the third picture book in Maura Finn and Cate James’s Billabong series—revisits the tone, style and structure of By the Billabong and Babies at the Billabong. All three follow a young child on a cheerful, engaging, playful excursion to an unmistakable Australian setting, cataloguing the native flora and fauna near the billabong in cumulative verse (think Old MacDonald but with more imagination and artistry). In this instalment, birds gather and joyously crescendo among the scribbly gums and the banksia, with one warbling magpie gradually joined by friends, including a ‘choir of cheeky cockatoos’ and others whose behaviour is gently anthropomorphised, such as the rock-and-roll fairy wrens. James’s illustrations are appealing: mellow yet energetic, lovingly capturing the comfortingly familiar shapes and colours of Australian plants and animals. Sharp-eyed children will delight in finding hidden feathers on each page, giving them a hint of the next bird species to be introduced (a technique also employed in the first two books). Enjoyable to read aloud, with bouncy rhythms that flow well and with a dramatic but not frightening storm at the climax, Birdsong may not extend the range of the first two books in this series but is nonetheless very satisfying for readers aged 2–7.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a freelance editor and writer, and a bookseller at the Hobart Bookshop. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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