ANIMAL FRIENDS 1 2 3

Flaps to open, animals to count—this should be fun.

The design of this board book is both consistent and complex. Patterned text is always on the left; paper-thin flaps are always in the same positions on the right. Each spread starts with “5 little” animals engaged in an activity, followed by an invitation to find one or more of the animals doing something different behind a flap. So five monkeys hide behind leaves, and one monkey behind a flap displays its “bright red bottom.” While this is guaranteed to elicit laughter from children, adults may not appreciate this distraction from the counting lesson. Color-coded dots below the text provide additional counting practice. When two bears behind the flaps are eating blueberries, two blue dots and three gray dots line up at the bottom of the page. This pattern continues with cats, pigs, and mice. With numbers six through 10, the task becomes addition, with readers lifting all the flaps to find the right number of animals invited to the mice’s party. Hint: The animals are in the same positions they occupied on their original pages. On the final spread all the animals are represented by colored dots scattered around a black background. Does this sounds confusing? It is! Young children learning basic numeracy need clarity not complications.

Fun for older preschoolers, but don’t count on this to teach math skills.