The Wheels on the Bus

Paul O. Zelinsky (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

Picture Book

Also available from:

CRITICS HAVE SAID

The song, with its repeated but contained gestures, is a perfect choice for a pop-up, for the art and engineering are woven together seamlessly, and the book will lose little of its appeal after the moving parts have run their race.–School Library Journal

IF YOU LOVE THIS BOOK, THEN TRY:

Barton, Byron. My Car. Greenwillow, 2001.

Bee, William. And the Train Goes. Candlewick, 2007.

Burningham, John. Mr. Gumpy’s Motor Car. HarperCollins, 1976.

Burningham, John. Mr. Gumpy’s Outing. Henry Holt, 1971.

Crews, Donald. Freight Train. Greenwillow, 1978.

Crews, Donald. Inside Freight Train. HarperCollins, 2001.

Hort, Lenny. The Seals on the Bus. Henry Holt, 2001.

Kirk, Daniel. Go! Hyperion, 2001.

Kovalski, Maryann. The Wheels on the Bus. Kids Can, 1987.

Mahy, Margaret. The Rattlebang Picnic. Dial, 1994.

Meister, Cari. Busy Busy City Street. Viking, 2000.

Pinkwater, Daniel. Tooth-Gnasher Superflash. Macmillan, 1990.

Raffi. The Wheels on the Bus. Crown, 1988.

Root, Phyllis. Rattletrap Car. Candlewick, 2001.

Roth, Carol. The Little School Bus. North-South, 2002.

Steen, Sandra, and Susan Steen. Car Wash. Putnam, 2001.

Sturges, Philemon. I Love Trains! HarperCollins, 2001.

Westcott, Nadine Bernard. I’ve Been Working on the Railroad: An American Classic. Hyperion, 1996.

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