1 2 3: A Child's First Counting Book by Alison Jay (Dutton, $15.99, 9780525478362/0525478361, 40 pp., ages 3-5, September)
Mother Goose: Numbers on the Loose by Leo and Diane Dillon (Harcourt, $17, 9780152056766/0152056769, 56 pp., ages 4-8, October)
A pair of witty, exuberant picture books playfully employs numbers and
numerals for the nursery set. Ever since her first book, Picture This,
Jay's interlinked visual details have helped budding readers pick up on
clues to a larger story. In 1 2 3: A Child's First Counting Book (a
companion to A B C: A Child's First Alphabet Book), "1 one little girl
sleeping" in the opening scene plays the heroine in the fairy tales to
follow, as the narrative counts up to 10 and down again. With the turn
of a page, the girl rides a giant bird with "two soaring wings" (which
later turns out to be the goose that lays "nine golden eggs"). Other
duos dot the landscape: two squirrels, an owl couple and two pigs on
their way to visit the third, which segues into the next spread, "three
little pigs"--clearly laying out the nature of the game for youngest
readers. The threatening wolf outside the window of the third pig's
house shows up later in a Little Red Riding Hood scene (with his "ten
sharp teeth"). A key in the back helps readers figure out the more
challenging puzzles.
The Dillons make visual logic from nonsensical text with a parade of
animals, humans, a masked mixture of each and animated inanimate
objects (clocks, numbers, letters) that march across the delightful
pages of Mother Goose: Numbers on the Loose as if they are performing a
play. The black sheep that doles out three bags of wool possesses an
overlarge long-eared head and huddles under a comforter from which
human legs and hands appear. Many of the spreads seem almost cinematic
in the way the drama unfolds. For "Sing a Song of Sixpence," the
4-and-20 blackbirds line up to enter the pie on the left-hand page,
then burst into song on the right. Because the king, the pie maker and
even the cat wear a long pointy proboscis on an elastic band, there's
no danger to "the maid . . . in the garden" when one of the blackbirds
"snap[s] off her nose." Bald-headed Gregory Griggs with his 27 wigs
will be a true crowd-pleaser, with his neatly arranged cabinet of nine
shelves of wigs, three across, proudly modeling his exotic hairpieces.
A large dose of whimsy, a unified palette and subtly repetitive shapes
create a cohesive homage to Mother Goose.--Jennifer M. Brown
