I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History’s Strangest Cures

I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat

Carlyn Beccia

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!

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Reinforced

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CRITICS HAVE SAID

“A whole lot of fun for those kids that really like the gross stuff for entertainment, as well as history buffs that think the methods of ancient humans are just plain interesting.” – APatchworkofBooks.com

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Seuling, Barbara. You Blink Twelve Times a Minute: And Other Freaky Facts About the Human Body. Picture Window, 2009.

Seuling, Barbara. You Can’t Sneeze with Your Eyes Open and Other Freaky Facts About the Human Body. Dutton, 1986.

Seuling, Barbara. Your Skin Weighs More than Your Brain and Other Freaky Facts About Your Skin, Skeleton, and Other Body Parts. Picture Window, 2008.