City Numbers

Gr 3—7—Featuring numerals from zero to 20, this gritty celebration of numbers is not a classic concept book. Rather than counting ever increasing quantities of objects in an orderly fashion, Schwartz and Beam showcase the numbers themselves, interspersing some fractions, percentage signs, and decimals with the whole numbers. Each spread includes an artistically composed urban photograph opposite the number printed in both text and digits in a sea of white space. The printed numerals appear to be cut from the corresponding photo. As in this team's City Alphabet (Groundwood, 2009), the pictures feature numbers displayed on everything from a construction Dumpster and a traffic light to apartment buildings and store windows. The numbers are made from a variety of materials. Some are painted, some molded from plastic, and still others are printed on paper or etched into metal. A sparsely worded caption describing the location of and materials on which the number appears accompanies each photo. For example, nine is "printed on vinyl sticker. Storefront door." In an afterword, both the author and photographer reflect on the omnipresence of numbers throughout the landscape of the city. Like Stephen T. Johnson's City by Numbers (Viking, 1998), this title will appeal to older children. Math teachers might use it to discuss the importance of numbers in our everyday world.—Linda L. Walkins, Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Brighton, MA