YUM-bers! Peanut Butter's Yummy Numbers by Terry Border

10 LITTLE PEANUTS JUMPING ON THE BREAD.

ONE FELL OFF...

Finish that rhyme in four words or less!

Yes, Terry Border's latest spin-off of his hit, Peanut Butter and Jelly: A Play Rhyme, parodies the popular countdown song about five little monkeys and a bed, using the author-illustrator's cutesy little peanuts taking their licks as each leaps one by one on the forbidden bread and land on its head. With this bouncy meter and repeated rhyme, kids will crave to join the countdown, learning their numbers as they sing along.

This time it's not Mama who steps in, but The Baker, who takes charge as his slice of bread gets flatter and sadder and the peanuts' boo boos add up, until it's back to the old oven to bake some more, in Border's latest board book for preschoolers, Peanut Butter's Yummy Numbers: Ten Little Peanuts Jumping on the Bread! (Philomel Books, 2016). There's plenty of punning and funning in store for youngsters until they are ready for arithmetical liftoff with the numbers from one to ten, along with Border's jolly peanut people artfully set in spot-art style against their bright-white pages.

Perhaps pair this one with the Eileen Christelow's beloved classical version, read first, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed (A Five Little Monkeys Story), to set the stage for a comparison lesson (What's the same, and what is different?) with twice the counting practice along with double the barrel-of-monkeys snickers.