Young Winnipeg illustrator/writer Jenny Visscher transforms the seemingly mundane but essential children’s activity of learning to count into an enticing enterprise in her counting book, I Can Have My Picnic in a Patch of Roses. She invites children to participate in counting by asking the most ordinary of questions, “Today I am going on a picnic. Where can I have it?” The answers are humorous rhyming variations on the abundant possibilities available in an Alice in Wonderland-style fantastical universe. A picnic with juice can happen in a spruce bog with a moose, or how about sharing some knishes with nine fancy fishes in a coral reef?

Visscher’s illustrations are a spirited feast of bright colour and offbeat comical detail. They are whimsically populated with a menagerie of animals with personality to spare: three boisterous bees look as if their boost has come from a couple too many sips of honey, and the nose-in-the-air demeanour of four snobby seals rivals that of the most formidable society matrons. Counting up the number of wild and crazy creatures becomes an involving game. While some of the descriptive adjectives attached to the animals seem chosen more for sound than sense, children will encounter a rich variety of creatures and environments in Visscher’s charming book.