What a Difference a Dot Makes! Little i by Michael Hall

WHEN LITTLE i'S DOT FELL OFF.... 1

IT ROLLED DOWN A HILL,

AND SPLASHED INTO THE SEA.

The rest of the alphabet is discombobulated. Little i didn't look like one of them anymore! He looked like a ... number! Weird!

"no way" said n and o and w, a, and y.

There is nothing for Little i to do but follow his missing dot as it is tossed away upon the waves. He finally made landfall and followed the beach all the way around the island, but everywhere he looked, his dot was NOT.

But there were exciting things to see as he searched. He saw a cascade of exclamation points, a garden of green sprouting commas, and a dazzling grotto of bright, gemlike asterisks. And beyond a scary bridge, what did he spot? His DOT.

BUT NOW, ODDLY, THE DOT FELT AWKWARD.

LITTLE i HAD GROWN TO LIKE BEING DOTLESS.

WHAT HAD LITTLE i BECOME?

Something had changed about Little i. Now he was...

A WORD.

"I," SAID BIG I!

Even little letters can can grow up and find themselves, in Michael Hall's latest, Little i (Greenwillow Books, 2017). Author-illustrator Michael Hall's trademark tissue collaged art is gorgeously colored, and his text takes on both typology and growing up, no small feat, sending his little letter out on an allegorical quest literally to find himself, while along the way introducing young readers to quite a few new punctuation marks--hyphens, exclamation points, and question marks, to name a few, with even his outgrown dot re-purposed as the absolutely essential period (which I will now put to use).

"Little i may be a mere cutout letter, but his humanity shines through,” says the New York Times Review."

Other books by Michael Hall which teach and delight are his Red: A Crayon's Story, Wonderfall, Perfect Square. and My Heart Is Like a Zoo. (see reviews here).

You Can Count On It! 7 Ate 9 byTara Lazar

I was dozing in my chair when an urgent bang on my door bolted me awake. It was 6.

"7 is coming to get me," said 6. As a private I, I am used to his type--numbers. They are always stuck in a problem. I knew this 7 fella. He was odd.

"What's 7 up to?" I asked.

"My days are numbered!" said 6. "Word on the street is that 7 ate 9, and now he's after me!"

"Technically, he's always after you." I said.

But all puns aside, Al F. Bet, Private I, promises to get down to the root of the case, where he soon runs into a number of complications. 9 indeed seems to be nowhere, cancelled out of the equation, so to speak. Al scours the street for 8, hoping she's got some data for him, but she claims to know nothing, nada, zilch, zero, despite the fact that she and 9 are known to be very close. But the news seems to frighten her.

"Then I'm next in line!" 8 said. In a flash she took off her belt.

Now 8 looked just like 0. Good disguise.

The detective ducks into the local diner for a piece of pi with ice cream on top, hoping to get a scoop. He asks the wisecracking waitress, B, whether she's seen the missing 9.

"Negative!" said B.

The clues just don't add up, and our ace private I figures he's got to find the missing 9 or prove he's been eliminated. But there's something about 6's story that doesn't quite seem to be on the up-and-up, in the just published 7 Ate 9 (Disney Hyperion Press, 2017), in which author Tara Lazar fashions a hoary old number riddle into a smart, stylish picture book while mining the tropes of the 1930s detective story and firing off punny gags like gunfire from a gang of Mafia goombahs.

Sometimes to solve the problem, you just have to invert something, and when Private I Bet spots 6 acting suspiciously he figures that 6 is actually 9, hiding in plain sight upside down, and the case is solved.

While technically a number recognition book, this one takes its wordplay into higher math (see the diner's dessert case with the sign PIECE OF PI, $3.14.) Lazar's numerically-savvy text is added by a #1 sidekick, artist Ross MacDonald, whose pencil, watercolor, and digital retro metro scenes and numerical characters add visual jokes.

A quantity of sight gags add up to a punny, funny tale that's Number One on the giggle-o-meter. Although the publisher recommends this one for preschool and Kindergarten children, the best jokes will likely score with savvy second and third graders who will get the clever numerical puns and gladly groan along to the final solution. Says School Library Journal, "An A-1 purchase for those who love play on words, mysteries, and humorous tales."

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.

Digital Dialog: Wumbers by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

"Would you like some honey to swee10 your tea?"

"Yes. That would be 1derful. Oh, and I just love your 2-2!"

"It's words from numbers!" proclaims the cover of Amy Krous Rosenthall's and Tom Lichtenheld's new collaboration, Wumbers (Chronicle Books, 2012). Using numeral digits to as stand-ins for syllables, Rosenthall fires off a series of these lingo-digital cre8ions that just get more in10sely funny as she rolls along. Illust8or Lichtenheld provides comic visual cues to help with readers figure out the wordplay, in a cross-curriculum game that will have math and language arts teachers laughing along.

Even music teachers can get into the act!

She's learning to play the 2ba.

"Tigh10 your mouth... then 4ce out the air."

"2T!"

Kids already into texting will be in the 4front, f8ed to take to this game in10sely right from the first page, but the rest won't w8 long before they, 2, will be exhilar8ed to join in, cre8ing their own Wumbers. So don't w8 and don't be l8!!

And to ex10d the top-r8ed fun, pair this 1 with Rosenthall's gr8 altern8 wordplay book, This Plus That: Life's Little Equations, and don't 4get the old master who started this all off, William Steig and his never overr8ed cla6, C D C ? and C D B!

2dles!

Making Something Out of Nothing: Our Hero! Zero by Kathryn Otoshi

I WISH I WERE LIKE ONE.

THEN I COULD COUNT, TOO!

It's not easy being Zero.

The other numbers, one through nine, have that one marvelous characteristic--VALUE! They have their own exclusive, secret order. They COUNT!

Poor Zero. She's wispy and round, basically just a HOLE! No wonder she feels so hollow inside!

Zero admires One's sleek shape and squared-off base. If only she could look like that! She stretches, and squeezes, and flattens, and elongates, but she just can't be like One!

IT WAS TOO MUCH OF A STRETCH!

The other numbers are sympathetic and try to help her become one of them. Eight suggests that she can make something of herself by doubling to look just like him; Nine lamely suggests that she pucker up and stretch out one side to copy him. But Zero just doesn't have it in her to be like them either.

Then wise Seven steps in with a suggestion that's a little outside the numerical order box:

"IT'S WHAT'S INSIDE THAT COUNTS."

And Zero has one of those EUREKA! moments. She has an idea how she can make herself and each number MORE than they are!

IF WE HELP EACH OTHER SOAR,

WE CAN COUNT EVEN MORE!

10 20 30 40 50!

600 700 800 900!!

1000 10000 100,000 1,000,000!!!

It's not every little picture book that can work as a simple counting book, a sophisticated number concept book, and a powerful little parable on the value of cooperation in social relationships. That old star of Saturday morning television, "our hero zero" is reborn here, both in its role as a powerful mathematical principle and as a symbol of the value of each unique individual in the group. Kathryn Otoshi's stylish new book, Zero (KO Kids, 2010) belongs on every primary classroom and library shelf, both for its marvelous design and layout and for its usefulness and appeal for youngsters. Otoshi's previous companion volume, One (KO Kids, 2009) is equally striking in its creative combination of number and color concepts with a simple treatise on resisting bullying. "Red may be hot; blue is not," but "Everyone COUNTS," one that is right on the number for its intended audience.