Math is not a scary, abstracted monolith, it's folded into everyday life in countless ways. Leave it to British author-illustrator Lauren Child's (I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato) ever-charming Charlie and his little sister Lola to make this point with panache.
Absolutely One Thing refers to how many treats Charlie and Lola get to choose when they go to the store with Mom: "One thing EACH," says Charlie, "which means TWO actual things." The delightfully mish-mashed spread--in Child's trademark scratchy line drawings with hodge-podge collage elements--shows Lola on her stomach on the floor, a supernaturally giant green apple in the middle, and Charlie holding one apple in each hand. "ONE for me, ONE for you," and a big "2÷2=1" looms above them, for good measure. Mom says they have to be ready to leave in 10 minutes, which, for Charlie, is the sum total of three minutes of tooth-brushing, one minute of remembering he forgot to eat breakfast, four minutes to eat "puffa pops," three minutes to brush his teeth again, and "EIGHT minutes to find Lola's left shoe." (That makes them 19 minus 10 minutes late.) Then, Lola needs to count the dots on her dress, but isn't sure what comes after 12. (She has no trouble, however, counting "twenty-seventeen" ladybugs on the way to the store, though she does puzzle over how many shoes the leggy bugs would wear.)
What really matters is that once they get to the store Lola pronounces, "Two things" and Mom says "Absolutely ONE thing," which is math that never ever changes. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness