Peas Be with You! 1-2-3 Peas by Keith Baker

THREE PEAS BOATING: ROW! ROW! ROW!

FOUR PEAS PLANTING: GROW, GROW, GROW!

The PEAS are back in Keith Baker's re-PEA-t appearance of his best-selling pedagogic peas, introduced in LMNO Peas, this time teaching numbers in his new 1-2-3 Peas (Beach Lane, 2012).

While it is a temptation to pun that this latest pea-saga isn't a patch on his alphabet outing, these numerical peas will doubtless please the preschool crowd. Baker's page design, with all bright-white pages (except for the 60s, a darker decade!) showing off his large pastel numerals as well as the numbers spelled out, works perfectly as a counting primer, but as in the earlier book, the antics of his anthropomorphic stick-limbed peas will charm the eye of youngsters, who will wish to to pea-ruse each page re-peatedly, while his pea-puns have their own wry ap-PEA-l to the adult who reads both books aloud. (For example, sharp-eyed adults will note the fab four "Peatles" and a glitzy "Peayonce'" putting in an appearance among the peas .)

Thanks to Keith Baker, kids, teachers, and parents will find both of these titles perfectly pea-chy, and youngsters will never think of that much maligned veggie in the same way again. "... Families are sure to devour Baker's latest winner. Totally ap-pea-ling!" quips Kirkus.

And for a perfect preschool pairing, there's a taste of LMNO Peas here.