The two main characters are chickens: Chicky and Nana. Chicky wants to demonstrate the ability to count up to five. S/he gets to three and Nana interrupts. She wants to show that she can count too - but she makes a mistake and goes from two straight to seven, eight and nine. Chicky happily corrects her, and Nana pleads forgiveness: old age is the problem and she is forgetful. Chicky tries to make Nana feel better, and agrees that learning was really difficult. S/he runs through the numbers one to five, showing Nana images from the natural environment to help her remember: one snail, two butterflies, three mushrooms, four flowers and five honey bees. Chicky praises Nana for getting all the numbers right. Now she can count too. When Nana agrees on the final page, 'Yes, little chicky. Now I can count too.' The slightly weary note in the repetition shows that Nana has only been pretending forgetfulness all along, to give Chicky confidence. The role reversal, with the child becoming the educator, is both clever and funny.
Nana's glasses signal poor eyesight, but the winged frames make her look like a wise owl - a clever visual subtext. The final full-colour endpapers have Chicky and Nana extending the narrative of the opening endpapers by counting to ten: six frogs, seven leaves, eight ladybirds, nine ants and ten clouds.
A further point of interest is that neither of the characters is Indigenous, and the author's cultural heritage is only implied in a note about the funding of the book on the imprint page. 'Come Count With Me!' therefore subtly challenges stereotypes of race, age and learning ability.
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
