Babymouse #1: Queen of the World! (Babymouse series)

Babymouse #1: Queen of the World!

Jennifer L. Holm; Matthew Holm (Illustrator)

Though I work in a bookstore, I discovered 1 2 3 when my brother gave it to my one-year-old daughter with the intention of helping her learn to count. At first glance I thought it was a nice counting book with beautiful illustrations. Once we read it a couple times, though, I began to notice details I had missed that made reading this book so much more than reciting numbers.

Each page represents a number and also offers delightful hidden surprises. The number six, for example, stars Hansel and Gretel and six shiny sweets, six lollipops outside the witch’s house, six mushrooms in the yard, six white birds, and six cats sulking about. Every page is a scavenger hunt with tons of little details tucked into the nooks and crannies of the illustrations that reinforce that page’s number. Children (and their parents) will enjoy recognizing characters they know well, with spreads depicting scenes from fairy tales from Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk to The Red Shoes and Little Red Riding Hood. There are often characters from other stories slipped into the background, foreshadowing their dedicated page to come. If you look out the window of the Gingerbread Man’s kitchen, for example, you will see Jack’s beanstalk off in the distance and the Ugly Duckling’s pond on the horizon.

This is one counting book I won’t mind reading over and over because I find new details each time we read it. My daughter, at one, is captivated by the illustrations. She loves pointing out the different animals and details. I can only imagine that as she gets older, she will love the treasure-hunt aspects this book offers even more than I do. I think it will help make counting and learning math a lot of fun for her!

Format

Trade Paperback

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CRITICS HAVE SAID

The Holms spruce up some well-trod ground with breathless pacing and clever flights of Babymouse’s imagination, and their manic, pink-toned illustrations of Babymouse and her cohorts vigorously reflect the internal life of any million-ideas-a-minute middle-school student.–Jesse Karp, Booklist

Both tales share eye-grabbing black-and-pink graphics, and a perceptible Spiegelman influence simmers in the energetic ink illustrations of the dot-eyed heroine.–Publishers Weekly

The visual narrative is presented in a variety of frames and vignettes, with most of the text in speech balloons, as is standard in comic strips. There is a driving energy to the drawings, along with animation, dramatic adventures, and lots of fun.–Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz, Children

Young readers will happily fall in line to follow Babymouse through both ordinary pratfalls (“Typical!” is her watchword) and extraordinary flights of fancyboth of which continue in Babymouse, Our Hero.–Kirkus Reviews

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