First Numbers

by Paradise Press

There are so many first-number books out there for babies, I couldn't even find ours online so had to scan my own for the picture. As you can see, it's well-worn from already surviving one daughter's infancy!  First the book goes through numbers one to ten, each page showing the numeral, with its number spelled out and naming the objects in the picture: 3 three blocks, 5 five cuddly teddy bears, etc. When it gets to 7 seven soft kittens, the pictures cover the entire two-page spread. After the number ten, we get twenty shiny beetles, fifty friendly dogs, and one hundred pretty butterflies. I've counted the beetles and the dogs, but never all the butterflies. I'm sure there's a hundred on that page! My older daughter and I used to pause on the beetle and butterfly pages to pick out our favorites- there really are so many pretty ones. The last few pages invite young readers to count different sets of objects mixed together, and the last page shows groups of objects from one to ten on a single spread. It's a nice solid little book with lots of counting opportunities. The pictures are all bold, bright and adorable (although the teddy bears look kind of anemic to me). My baby doesn't count yet but she likes to look at the images and I'm sure she's absorbing something about the numbers as well. The only oddity is that on the back cover a clown is pictured, and there are no clowns inside the book. Maybe it's supposed to match the jack-in-the-box on the first page, but their faces are so different.

rating: 4/5 ........ 28 pages, 2004