Hello Numbers! What Can You Do? An Adventure Beyond Counting

This appealingly energetic visualization of numbers and how they can be added, subtracted, and used to organize space starts “in the emptiest place, on the blankest of page.” From there, Harriss and Hughes employ Seuss-style rhymes to summon a collection of goggle-eyed dots, beginning with: “One is a person, a place, or a thing,/ One head on your shoulders, One note that you sing.” (A line clashes against evolving pronoun use: “If something’s an ‘it,’ not a ‘we’ or a ‘they,’/ Then when you are counting it, One’s what you say.”) With each new number, fresh possibilities appear: “Now, with your Two, you can tell which is where—/ Maybe One’s over here, and Two’s waaaaaay over there.” Rea’s wide-eyed dots, each brightly color-coded to the number they represent, cavort in a grayscale universe, coming together and breaking apart while introducing concepts such as symmetry, angles, and shapes, and finally inviting children to keep counting as high as they can go. Ages 3–6. (Nov.)