One Potato: a Counting Book of Potato Prints (Signed)

A vegetable-filled combination counting and craft book helps young readers learn how to count to one hundred and demonstrates how to make creative pictures with paint and potatoes.

So titled, this promising debut work might at first call to mind the schoolyard counting verse "One Potato, Two Potato," but in fact it quickly departs from that model, with the introduction of two large, ripe eggplants, three ears of late-summer corn, four heavy-hanging pears (actually three, the fourth having dropped already, to the bottom of the page) and so on through 10. Then Pomeroy jumps ahead to 20, then 30, 40, 50 and finally 100, employing smaller, clustering fruits and vegetables such as radishes, grapes and blackberries to illustrate the higher numbers (yes, she really has painted 100 sunflower seeds). Vegetable life fairly teems here in all of its seasonal splendor, and Pomeroy has chosen a sublimely suitable medium: hand-carved potato prints. Warmly colored and folksy, yet striking in their subtle detail, her pictures elegantly update the classic look of prewar produce labels and poster art. A bonus at the end is a set of clear, step-by-step instructions for making prints at home, using the "lowly but lovely potato." Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Subtitled ``A Counting Book of Potato Prints,'' Pomeroy's first book is a handsome one indeed. The progression of numbers--1- 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 100--takes readers through attractively framed pages of ``One potato,'' ``Five carrots,'' up through ``Fifty blackberries'' and ``One hundred sunflower seeds,'' all created by painting carved potatoes with acrylics and stamping them on warm, cream-colored paper. Sunflowers and leaves appear on every page; more fruits and vegetables make delectable printed endpapers. Simple, first-person instructions on potato printing, as well as suggestions for what to make, conclude the book. Odds are that young readers will stampede kitchenward on a potato raid! (Picture book/nonfiction. 3-8) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 3^-7. Beginning with 1 potato, Pomeroy provides numbers of fruits and vegetables for counting 1 through 20, moving by tens up to 50, and finishing with 100 sunflower seeds. The counting is clear and progressively more challenging, and the botanical prints, made with potatoes, are luscious and lovely. Pomeroy gives directions for making potato prints ("children can tell the grown-up what to carve, choose the colors, and do the stamping" ), along with suggestions for things to stamp, such as greeting cards and gift wrap. Susan Dove Lempke