Counting the Chicks Before They Hatch! Ten Eggs in a Nest by Marilyn Sadler

GWEN THE HEN HAD LAID ALL HER EGGS. SHE WAS GOING TO BE A MOTHER!

RED ROOSTER WAS GOING TO BE A FATHER! "HOW MANY EGGS DID YOU LAY TODAY?" HE ASKED.

Gwen is a superstitious sitting hen, and she asserts that it is bad luck to count your chicks before they hatch. The two anxious parents-to-be agree to take it as it comes.

So when the first chick pops out, Red Rooster struts proudly over to Worm World, and proprietor Pinky Pig is happy to sell him one worm for one coin.

Red runs back to the roost to feed Baby #1, only to discover a surprise! Two more baby chicks have hatched. It's back to Worm World for Red, where he announces proudly that he is the papa of one plus two--three chicks!  But the responsibilities of fatherhood have multiplied while Red Rooster was at the worm emporium. Back at the nest he finds three more chickies waiting for their worms.

Red puzzles over the count as he heads back to Pinky's emporium: One plus two plus three equals... six babies. Papa Red Rooster realizes that he is also out six coins! Being a family man is harder than he knew!

But the count continues to mount back at the coop, with four new chicks waiting for him in the barnyard, in veteran storyteller Marilyn Sadler's jolly new Bright and Early Book, Ten Eggs in a Nest (Bright & Early Books(R)) (Random House, 2014). Emergent readers and beginner mathematicians will find lots of fun on the way to ten in this newest beginner reader, executed by artist Michael Fleming in bright primary colors in a style reminiscent of P.D. Eastman's early reader classics. Red Rooster is a comely comic character who gets his tail feathers all a-flutter in his frantic rush to provide his new babies with provender, and he gets to play out the final comic line in fine feather.

YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED HIM OVER WITH A FEATHER!

This one pairs perfectly with Theo LeSieg's (alias Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel's) classic counting book, Ten Apples Up On Top!