Odds and Evens: A Numbers Book

This cleverly conceived but unevenly executed counting book uses familiar sayings to proceed from one (``A one-horse town'') to 13 (``A baker's dozen''); along the way are snippets of proverbs (``Two in the bush''), quotes from nursery rhymes (``Three blind mice'') and figurative expressions (``Behind the eight ball''). Goennel ( Heidi's Zoo ) pairs each phrase with a bold and jazzy painting. Her stark figures, flat perspectives and brilliant palette pack visual appeal, but her choice of subject often fails to illuminate, or even to jibe with, the expression at hand. For example, her scene of a horse grazing outside a metropolis suggests the opposite of a ``one-horse'' town, while her witch cycling past 11 trees in the moonlight has no connection to the last-minute rush denoted by the idiom ``the eleventh hour.'' Young readers may well be left at sixes and sevens. Ages 4-up. (Apr.)