Skip to main content

If You Like... Counting Books

When it comes to back-to-school season, ABC books (also called abecedaries) tend to dominate the scene. I get it. If you're starting the school year, you're most likely gearing up to talk about the alphabet and learn about all the different letters. But something almost as fun as letters is numbers. If back to school makes you think about counting 123, then here are some awesome counting books for you!

Written by Caspar Salmon
Illustrated by Matt Hunt
Lincoln, MA: Nosy Crow Inc., 2023. Picture Book.

Do you think that you're so smart? Do you think that you can count all the numbers really high? That's great, but this book only wants you to count to one. We are just mastering counting to one. Of course, you could always try to outsmart the book. But who would want to do that? This is a very fun and goofy interactive book that will have older kids dying to practice their counting -- well past the number one.

By Emily Gravett
London: Boxer Books, Ltd., 2023. Picture Book.

Nine playful kittens, and their one sleeping mama, get caught up in a color-mixing, counting adventure. As mama naps, the mischievous kittens find cans of primary-color paint and the ten kittens are soon covered in red spots, yellow spots, and blue spots. And before long, in green, orange, and purple splats. Light on text, this book effectively teaches counting and color mixing with illustrations that are a delight to study and that are reminiscent of classic children's books.

Written by David LaRochelle
Illustrated by Lian Cho
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2023. Picture Book.

For readers ready to go a step beyond counting, this hilarious picture book includes subtracting and adding dragons from our 100 dragon total. As we follow our 100 dragons -- all named Broccoli -- on their wild and crazy adventures, made possible by hilarious illustrations, we are also sneakily subtracting and adding to get back to our 100 dragons. Silly but entertaining, perfect to challenge the belief that math is boring.

By Susie Ghahremani
New York: Abrams Appleseed, 2017. Picture Book.

Still ready to go beyond counting 1 to 10? In this unendingly cute picture book, simple text helps us to count and stack a group of adorably cute cats. At first, we're counting as our cats are stacking, until a stack of more than three becomes unstable -- and the cats figure out other ways to count and stack. A darling little counting book, perfect for cat lovers or anyone else.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Kareem Between

  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...

Review: A World Without Summer

A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out Written by Nicholas Day Illustrated by Yas Imamura New York: Random House Studio, 2025. Informational. 294 pages. In 1815 on a small island in Indonesia, Mount Tambora erupted. The blast was the largest in human history, and one of the deadliest. Though it couldn't be understood at the time, the deadly blast half a world away would lead to catastrophic famine in Europe, prompt westward expansion in America, and inspire the novel Frankenstein  by Mary Shelley. The global climate disaster following the explosion also led to inventions like modern meteorology and the early invention of the bicycle. The people living at the time couldn't have seen how everything was connected, but this fast paced narrative assures that readers will. As he did in 2024's Sibert winner The Mona Lisa Vanishes, Nicholas Day does an impressive job of weaving together different historical events into one single, compell...