ANNIE'S ONE TO TEN

An unassuming but imaginative counting book that packs a lot of concepts into its simple, attractive format. Numerals appear only at the beginning and end; elsewhere, the numbers appear as words. Each double spread has four sets of things, each combining to make ten: e.g., four trucks and six vans, five ice cream cones and five birthday cakes, and (most interestingly) ten monkeys and no bananas (just the peels, which can of course be counted). There is a concluding reiteration. Plenty of variety for practice here, with numbers and with other concepts (e.g., six crabs and four starfishes are sea creatures; six buckets and four spades for the buckets). The art is not outstanding, but has the charm of its diminutive size.