New Book Release: Ten Zany Birds

I am very excited to announce that my new children's picture book, Ten Zany Birds, has finally arrived! Right now it's available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle in the United States, but it will be available soon worldwide, and at other outlets. You can find it here.

Short blurb:  Ten zany birds have a tree party, until one by one they find other things to do. It's a zany countdown - which bird will stick around?

Description:  When ten little birds get together, it's a feathered festival! The party would last forever, if none of the ten friends were so easily distracted.

One is frightened by a loud plane. One gets hungry. One wants to race and another needs a bath. Only one stays to sing in the tree, but who will it be?

Ten Zany Birds is a fun, beautifully illustrated picture book. As parents and teachers read, children are introduced to counting and basic subtraction skills. Whenever a bird leaves, the number of striped, spotted, and polka-dotted birds changes, teaching the application of simple classification rules.

Whimsical and entertaining, Sherry Ellis's tale of ten silly, distractible little birds is an excellent choice for both pre-reader storybook time and early readers. 

(If anyone would like to review it, please let me know!)



Now for a short story: Trouble in the Cat House

This one involves Bootsy, our cat. Yesterday morning, I went outside just in time to see Bootsy chasing something. The chase led right to his cat igloo. He stood at the entrance in full pounce mode.

"What's going on, boy?" I asked.

He didn't move for about ten seconds. Then he sat down and started meowing. Clearly, he was upset. He looked at me and meowed, like he wanted me to do something about whatever his problem was.

I walked over to his igloo and peered inside. All I saw was his cat pillow. That couldn't be it. I took the cat pillow out, half expecting to see a snake.

I didn't see a snake. But I did see something. It was small, and brown, and furry.  And it looked at me with little beady eyes. Can you guess what it was?

A chipmunk!

"Oh, boy, little chipmunk," I said. "Not a smart thing to wander into a cat house!"

I picked Bootsy up and got him away from there. I figured he probably didn't want to mess up his house with chipmunk guts, which is why he didn't make the kill. But that little creature didn't stand a chance with the sinister cat waiting at the entrance!

(I returned later, to see if the chipmunk was still inside. He wasn't. And I didn't see any blood trails, so hopefully he lived to see another day!)