Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type

Click, Clack, Moo/Ready-To-Read Level 2

Doreen Cronin; Betsy Lewin (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

Cronin humorously turns the tables on conventional barnyard dynamics; Lewin’s bold, loose-lined watercolors set a light and easygoing mood that matches Farmer Brown’s very funny predicament. Kids and underdogs everywhere will cheer for the clever critters that calmly and politely stand up for their rights, while their human caretaker becomes more and more unglued.–Publishers Weekly

IF YOU LOVE THIS BOOK, THEN TRY:

Babcock, Chris. No Moon, No Milk. Crown, 1993.

Becker, Suzy. Manny’s Cows: The Niagara Falls Tale. HarperCollins, 2006.

Choldenko, Gennifer. Moonstruck: The True Story of the Cow Who Jumped Over the Moon. Hyperion, 1997.

Cronin, Doreen. Diary of a Worm. HarperCollins, 2003. (And others in the Diary series.)

Cronin, Doreen. Dooby Dooby Moo. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Cronin, Doreen. Duck for President. Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Cronin, Doreen. Giggle, Giggle, Quack. Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Cronin, Doreen. Thump, Quack, Moo: A Whacky Adventure. Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Cronin, Doreen. Wiggle. Atheneum, 2005.

Demuth, Patricia Brennan. The Ornery Morning. Dutton, 1991.

Doyle, Malachy. Cow. McElderry, 2002.

Egan, Tim. Metropolitan Cow. Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Egan, Tim. Serious Farm. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Feiffer, Jules. Bark, George. HarperCollins, 1999.

Himmelman, John. Chickens to the Rescue. Henry Holt, 2006.

Johnson, Paul Brett. The Cow Who Wouldn’t Come Down. Orchard, 1993.

Kirby, David, and Allen Woodman. The Cows Are Going to Paris. Caroline House, 1991.

Krosoczka, Jarrett J. Punk Farm. Knopf, 2005.

Palatini, Margie. Moo Who? HarperCollins, 2004.

Rostoker-Gruber, Karen. Rooster Can’t Can’t Cock-a-Doodle-Doo. Dial, 2004.

Shannon, David. Duck on a Bike. Scholastic, 2002.

Speed, Toby. Two Cool Cows. Putnam, 1995.

Vail, Rachel. Over the Moon. Orchard, 1998.

Waddell, Martin. Farmer Duck. Candlewick, 1992.

Willems, Mo. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Hyperion, 2003.