Anno's Counting Book - Softcover

Mitsumasa Anno

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0590446754 ISBN 13: 9780590446754

Publisher: Scholastic, 1975

Synopsis

A simple, beautiful introduction to math for the youngest readers

Every child is a natural mathematician, according to Mitsumasa Anno. Children are constantly comparing and classifying things and events they observe around them. As they try to bring sense and order into what they observe, they are actually performing basic mathematical feats.

With Anno's Counting Book, the creator of the brilliantly inventive Anno's Alphabet invites young readers on another stimulating adventure of the imagination—this time into the world of numbers and counting.

Gentle watercolor pictures show a landscape changing through the various times of day and the turning seasons, months and years, and the activities of the people and animals who come to live there. But the seemingly simple plan of the book is deceptive: look more carefully and you will see one-to-one correspondences; groups and sets; scales and tabulations; changes over time periods; and many other mathematical relationships as they occur in natural, everyday living. The reader is subtly led to see and understand the real meaning of numbers.

Look at this book and look again. Each time you do so, you will find another application of a natural mathematical concept that you had not noticed before.

About this title

Review

What kind of a counting book is this? On the first page all we see is a barren winter landscape--a hazy, blue sky above a hazy, white hill. Nothing to count here. But wait, this is zero! On the next page the scene brightens: one tree, one bird, one house. Turn the page again and the snow has started to melt--we find two buildings, two trucks, two trees, two children, two dogs, and two adults. Suddenly there is almost more than we can count on each page! The objects in the beautiful watercolor pictures correspond with each consecutive number, and in addition (so to speak), the number of items on the page increases exponentially.

Mitsumasa Anno, author and illustrator of the award-winning Anno's Journey, has crafted a lovely medium to help kids learn to count. His love for numbers is reflected in the symmetry of every page, as well as his respect for the mathematical relationships that occur all around us. What kind of a counting book is this? The graceful, intelligent, engaging kind. (Ages 4 to 8)

From the Back Cover

Every child is a natural mathematician, according to Mitsumasa Anno. Children start to count long before they learn their ABC's, for they are constantly comparing and classifying things and events they observe around them. As they try to bring sense and order into what they observe, they are actually performing basic mathematical feats.

In this book, Mitsumasa Anno, the creator of the brilliantly inventive Anno's Alphabet, invites young readers on another stimulating adventure of the imagination-this time into the world of numbers and counting. Gentle watercolor pictures show a landscape changing through the various times of day and the turning seasons, months and years, and the activities of the people and animals who come to live there. But the seemingly simple plan of the book is deceptive: look more carefully and you will see one-to-one correspondences; groups and sets; scales and tabulations; changes over time periods; and many other mathematical relationships as they occur in natural, everyday living. Just as our forebears developed our number system from observing the order of nature, the reader is subtly led to see and understand the real meaning of numbers.

Look at this book and look again. Each time you do so, you will find another application of a natural mathematical concept that you had not noticed before.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scholastic
• Publication date: 1975
• ISBN 10: 0590446754
• ISBN 13: 9780590446754
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 31