If you sing the 12 days of Christmas at any time, then you know all the words that are in the story. What makes this story unique one is the type of illustrations and to the way they choose to illustrate it. The first through fourth days are typical and while one would expect five to show rings, it shows them in a nest.  Then if one goes to the back of the book, there is history where it is believed that the five rings were actually the rings on a pheasant or yellow rings on finches.  Little things like this happen for the rest of the book. For example 10 Lords of Leaping are picture of rabbits and my favorite, the drummers are woodpecker ‘s. This book is well done in a different way that looks at history of this  holiday song.