Children's lit titan Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) needs no introduction, but for the youngest readers, the numbers do. Created as a promotional pamphlet for a museum in 1970 but never before published, Ten Little Rabbits is a brisk, sweet, and funny picture-book intro to counting that makes an audacious suggestion: there's something magical about numbers.
Ten Little Rabbits begins with a boy in a magician's getup taking the stage. He sets his upturned top hat on a pedestal, and out pops a yellow rabbit; a large numeral "1" appears low on the page--readers can't miss it. In the illustration that follows, the yellow rabbit has moved to the top of the boy's head so a second rabbit--blue this time--can pop out of the hat; the numeral "2" appears below. On it goes, up to 10, at which point the boy is alarmingly festooned with rabbits--"So then--/ he made them vanish again!" Back the rabbits go into the hat, one by one, until the rabbit tally is "none." Following a tip of his hat, the boy exits stage left: "All done."
The modesty of the book's sketch-like drawings--in black and white but for the rabbits--ensures that readers won't be overwhelmed by the central concept, although they may be overcome with amusement: not only are bunnies everywhere, but the magician wears increasingly put-upon facial expressions as more and more rabbits threaten to ruin his act. Sendak adeptly tweaks the boy's eyebrows and mouth to relay his surprise, concern, and annoyance, which is to say his relatable humanness. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author