10 Times 10

K-Gr 2—This sophisticated concept book cleverly illustrates the numbers one through 10 using 10 different categories: "Numbers," "Fingers," "Paints," "Body," "Creation," "Construction," "Games," "Story," "Racing," and "Questions." The first chapter starts with zero while, oddly, none of the others do. In "Fingers," the digits of a human hand illustrate the numbers 11 to 15 and then morph into an undersea plant to show the numbers 16 to 20. Older children may find this amusing, but the transition is subtle and potentially confusing. "Paints" begins with one white line of paint accompanied by the text "One is white." The next page shows a white stripe and a red stripe and the text "Two is red." For "Five is orange," the four previous stripes (white, red, yellow, and blue) ingeniously appear, with the red and yellow ones intersecting to create orange. The four colors continue to intersect to create additional colors. Children may find the text puzzling. The wordless "Creation" chapter stretches over 10 pages and includes a naked Eve and Adam wearing fig leaves. Toward the end, there's a tally count of 100; 1,000 legs on a millipede; 10,000 spectators. The following page poses the question "What would you buy with one hundred thousand gold bars?" and shows six different luxurious objects. The book concludes with "one thousand million grains of sand" and "one thousand billion stars and more, to infinity…." Curiously, the last 13 pages are unnumbered. Counting books abound, and while this one certainly ranks high on the novelty and creativity scale, it may be too amorphous and esoteric to have wide audience appeal.—Rachel Kamin, North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, Highland Park, IL