Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

It’s Perfect Picture Book Friday! Here’s a lovely and creative counting book that just might inspire you to get out in nature before school starts. It’s also a great book for teachers to start off the year!

Congratulations to Julie LaCombe, winner of Adventures to School by Miranda Paul!

Next week, be sure to stop by for Tammi Sauer’s guest post on Mining for Heart!

 

Title: 100 Bugs! A Counting Book

Written by: Kate Narita

Illustrated by: Suzanne Kaufman

Farrar, Straus, Giroux – 2018

Suitable for ages: 5-7

Themes/topics: insects, nature, math

Opening:
Explorers, explorers, rising with the sun.
Hat on the creaky door.
Pack on the shiny floor.
It’s time for some bug-counting fun!

Overview: (from barnesandnoble.com)
How many bugs can you count? From walking sticks to spittlebugs, dragonflies to katydids, discovering 10 bugs at a time, you just might see 100 bugs!
Little explorers will learn 10 different ways to count to 10, using 10 different kinds of bugs, and get all the way to 100 by the end of their adventure. With Suzanne Kaufman’s bright, whimsical illustrations and Kate Narita’s clever rhyming text, 100 Bugs! is part look-and-find, part learning experience, and all kinds of fun.

Activities and Resources:
This book is a perfect opportunity to create class or small-group books involving a similar pattern of addition. Create a frame and let children decide what they’ll count by tens and another category to use in place of the flowers.

Another variation would be to use a number other than 10 and similarly build through addition.

Prepositions: Instead of using “by the ___” on each page, kids might use different prepositions throughout their book.

A super book to celebrate the 100th day of school!

Author website activities for 100 Bugs! 

Why I like this book:
This multilayered counting book goes beyond the typical in a clever and engaging way. Instead of counting 1 through 10 as many counting books do, this one counts by tens and uses every combination of addends in the process: 1 and 9, 2 and 8, etc. As the young “explorers” search for insects on each page, the gorgeous illustrations offer an “I spy” opportunity for young readers. In addition to the insects that flit about on each spread, the author introduces a type of flower. The insects and flowers are not the most common and provide lots of interest, with additional information on both in the back matter. The multiple layers offer a wide appeal and promote math concepts in the process.
For teachers, this book lends itself beautifully to being a model for class books. As a teacher, making class and individual books was always great fun, producing books that the kids enjoyed over and over as authors and readers.

 

Visit author Susanna Hill’s Perfect Picture Books for a plethora of picture books listed by title and topic/theme, each with teacher/parent activities and resources.