From The Twelve Cats of Christmas by Kandy Radzinski to Emily Brenner’s On the First Day of Grade School, the familiar Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” has inspired lots of picture book adaptations. Ontario author Jan Andrews adds her latest picture book to the canon of 12-days tales. Andrews’ cumulative text describes gifts the sunshine brings each day and invites children to find each one: two goatsbeard seeds, a song sparrow nest for three, and other wonders of nature right through to 12 eggs a-hatching.

This is not the first time summer has been used like this. In 1991 Elizabeth Lee O’Donnell released her version of Twelve Days of Summer, about a young girl who befriends creatures at the beach. Andrews’ version is less successful than O’Donnell’s fun, child-centred tale because Andrews’ story lacks a strong storyline and a protagonist for children to identify with. Nor are some of the replaced lyrics, such as “five toads a-hopping,” particularly inventive.

Unfortunately, Susan Rennick Jolliffe’s ink and coloured-pencil illustrations don’t help to fill in the missing components. Children may not be easily persuaded to explore Jolliffe’s illustrations in search of the itemized creatures and anthropomorphized plant life because the extremely busy double-page spreads make the task difficult. Sinister-looking bees and a few toads and crows with unexplained chips on their shoulders all create a slightly unsettling effect, especially in combination with ox-eye daisies and gnarled tree-trunk faces.

A page of “Facts – Common and Curious” follows the story, providing additional information about the featured animals and plants, but it’s not enough to sufficiently raise the interest level.