Look Whooo's Counting - Hardcover

Macdonald, Suse

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0590683209 ISBN 13: 9780590683203

Publisher: Scholastic Inc., 2000

Synopsis

A Caldecott Honor artist asks the reader to find numbers that are transformed into animal shapes and hidden in the illustrations.

About this title

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-K-A young owl flies through the pages of this book and sees in the moonlit landscape a way to learn to count from 1 to 10. Each turn of the page reveals a group of animals whose shape matches the contour of a number: the curving tails of two mice form two 2s, the graceful silhouettes of five cranes form 5s, the bowed horns of the six big-horned sheep form 6s, and so on. The owl's body is created with a few brown-paper pieces in a simple mosaic. As each double-page spread introduces a new number, that number appears in a feathery row along her wings. Small children will enjoy looking for the pattern and relationship of shape to number. Each concept is shown reinforced several times: as a boldly colored numeral in one sentence, in order as the numbers are added in another, as a part of an animal, and in the owl's wings. Each number is also shown as a group of animals to count. The lines of the cut-paper and paint illustrations are simple enough so that what the owl sees can be seen clearly by children. As the numbers progress, the sky darkens, until the last page, which shows bright narcissus flowers holding 10 snails in the early morning light. This is an owlishly clever approach to counting and looking at number shapes, with plenty to talk about with children just learning to enumerate and to recognize numbers.
Kathie Meizner, Montgomery County Public Libraries, Chevy Chase, MD
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

Young Owl takes a sunset-to-dawn census of her habitat one nightAand learns to count in the process. As she enumerates "1 prairie dog sitting on a hill," "2 mice in the field," and so on, something magical happens: the animals and insects bear an uncanny resemblance to individual numerals, as do her own feathers. When Owl counts "8 spiders in a web," for example, the bodies of the octet of insects look just like the numeral eight, while Owl's underfeathers form the numerals one through eight. (A few of the examples are a stretch, including the moths' wings formed like the numeral four or the bats' numeral seven-shaped right wings.) By book's end, Owl's entire wingspan is made up of the numerals one through 10. MacDonald (Alphabatics) keeps her text spare, so the sheer inventiveness of her cut-paper illustrations takes center stage. Her Owl (whose stylized anatomy may remind children of puzzle pieces) swoops and soars through the full-bleed spreads, her wings taking on almost balletic aspects as she flies over moonlit fields and shimmering water and through the ever-changing night sky. Young audiences should have a fine time plumbing the subtle beauty and humor in MacDonald's richly textured landscapes. Ages 3-8. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0590683209
• ISBN 13: 9780590683203
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Macdonald Suse