Tuesday Storytime: Counting Concepts

One Giant Splash:  A counting book about the ocean
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Todd Ouren
ISBN: 9781404805774
Textured collages and hidden images in bright saturated colors.

All of these are on the short side, to be totally honest - it's hard to get a long sustaining narrative going in counting or math-concept form.  I'm impressed with books like One White Wishing Stone or Molly Bang's Ten Nine Eight because they manage a narrative flow so deftly, but even then it's hard to sustain.  So, despite being short, I like this one for quite a few reasons: 1) it's a counting-down book (starting from 12) instead of counting up.  2) so colorful and vibrant.  3) the language is STELLAR.  I love it.  There are slant-rhymes and wordplay and alliteration and consonance and it's just fabulous to read.  Delightful.  4) there's a decided mystery at play, because our first page is the Giant Splash, but we don't see who it is until the very end.  5) the pace of the "mystery" picks up as we move from languid spreads to hurried frantic pages to the last reveal page.  Absolutely a winner.


Ten Little Ladybugs
Melanie Gerth, illustrated by Laura Huliska-Beith
ISBN: 9781581170917
Concept book with textured plastic ladybugs on board-book pages

Our rhyme counts inexorably down to zero as our ladybugs vanish after various encounters, but what's happening to the missing bugs?  Surely they can't be getting eaten, but as the encounters range from big grasshoppers to even more dangerous frogs and birds, the kids start looking more and more concerned.  Of course they're all safe at the end (this is a toddler storytime after all) drawn traditionally on the last page to preserve the happy surprise.


One, Two, Cockatoo!
Sarah Garson
ISBN: 9781842709443
Lovely orange and yellows suffuse this bright cheery book with rainstorms and happy birds.

Again with the unavoidable shortness, but we had a distracted and young-skewing group today, so it worked out nicely.  This one starts off as a combined counting and math-concept book at the beginning, but it quickly drops that to move to just counting upwards to ten as the birds frolic in the trees before, during, and after a rainstorm (with a bonus bird at the end!).  I like this book mainly for the colors and the brightness of the cheery friendly birds dancing and playing with each other.  Something about the illustrations just makes me feel quite happy and content, and I hope that feeling gets transferred to the kids.