Ask anyone--a boy can be clever, playful and unpredictable. Seeger's latest concept book is like that: clever in its design, playful to the point of being puzzling, perplexingly unpredictable. Die-cut alternating pages do double-duty in this boldly graphic counting book, first isolating a portion of an illustration on the right, and then, when the page is turned, disclosing the larger picture while isolating both the numeral and a portion of the preceding text to alter both the visual and the verbal context: one boy / all alone; two seals / at the sea. Readers will want to make predictions about the big reveals, but they may become temporarily frustrated (especially when they reach the unnamed items that represent "nine"). The illustrative objects appear to be unrelated to one another, and there is no pattern or narrative, but the final page discloses a rather convenient connecting thread:These are paintings that the all-alone boy has created to illustrate numbers one through ten. (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

WHAT makes a child come to love numbers? When I was little, my mother used to play me a recording of the song "Inchworm." "Inchworm, inchworm,/ Measuring the marigolds,/You and your arithmetic,/You'll probably go far," sang Danny Kaye to a haunting melody, while children's voices plaintively intoned the chorus: "Two and two are four. /Four and four are eight. /Eight and eight are 16. /Sixteen and 16 are 32." This song left me with a Lifelong love of numbers, especially base two; Decades later, I sometimes find myself practicing my multiplication tables during the slow movements at Mostly Mozart concerts. I can imagine Laura Vaccaro Seeger's "One Boy" having the same effect. This picture book acquaints a child with the numbers from one to 10. Each number is introduced with a simple but charming trick: a rectangular cutout in the page reveals a bit of what lies overleaf, inviting the reader to make a guess at the surprise to come with the turn of the page. "Five mice." Five mice what? Turn the page. ... "Skate on ice." It's not just about counting; it's about realizing that the word "ice" is contained in "mice." Seeger's palette is bold and rich - and those who experience numbers coloristically (in my case, four is blue, seven is green and eight is orange) know how important this can be in making friends with them. Yet the ending of "One Boy" is somewhat dark. (Spoiler alert: it involves a quantity of ants in the boy's pants.) For the slightly older child, "The Real Princess: A Mathemagical Tale" ought to prove a beguiling mix of number lore and fairy tale. The plot elements will be familiar: three princes looking for brides, a king with three bags of gold and a queen with nine magic peas. But running through Brenda Williams's story is a riot of numerical coincidences, some turning on the curious fact that if you take various multiples of nine (18, 27, 36, 45 etc.) and add up the digits (1+8, 2+7, 3+6, 4+5), you always get nine back again. This is the kind of hidden pattern that children delight in discovering. Arid if some of the artsier parents fail to get it, they'll at least smile at Sophie Fatus's illustrations, which have a little of Marc Chagall in them, and a little of Joan Miró. We're all born with a genetically wired "number sense," so brain scientists tell us. Even a baby can immediately distinguish two rubber duckies from three (an ability called "subitizing"). But what if it's a matter of thousands of rubber duckies floating toward you? To take a less ludicrous case, how can one make a reasonable guess about the number of protesters at a political rally, or of seeds on a dandelion? Don't count, says Bruce Goldstone - estimate! And in "Greater Estimations" (a sequel to his "Great Estimations," which makes the author guilty of serial Dickens abuse) he reveals all the tricks for doing this swiftly and accurately: eye training, clump counting and so on. Is that cool? I don't know. But it's empowering - dare I say fun? - to have an instinctive grasp of really big numbers. And, when you grow up, you can get a job with the N.Y.P.D. estimating the size of the crowd when Simon and Garfunkel sing in Central Park. This fall, yet another study made headlines bemoaning our failure to develop the math skills of American children, especially girls. "We're living in a culture ... that's telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math," the study's lead author said. Only Asians and nerds? That is so not true! In France, unlike the United States, mathematics has immense cultural prestige and is regarded as the key to meritocratic success. We must get the message out. Children can't resist that French chic. Jim Holt is the author of "Stop Me if You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes."

Starred Review. Seeger (First the Egg) crafts another nifty peek-a-boo book, counting to 10 and identifying new words by exposing or covering letters with die-cuts. A square die-cut on the cover frames the head of the title character, who is quickly introduced: as readers turn to the first spread, Seeger offers a numeral one and one boy on the verso page, with the boy framed in a rectangle on the right. A turn of the page shifts the opening to the left side and the words all alone appear, with alone incorporating one. The boy now is visible without the frame, seated among empty chairs, a knapsack and paintbrushes by his side. This pattern repeats with two seals/ at the sea, the sea derived from seals. Three apes, behind die-cut bars of a cage, make a big escape. Aside from four monkeys who [hold] the key to the apes' cage, the images do not form a continuous narrative. Instead, the one boy reappears, and with the words all done, he walks away from the book's 10 images, his paintbrushes dripping. Seeger uses pared-down digital art and flat saturated colors, trading in her characteristic handmade appeal for a slick look. But she's innovative as ever, improving a standard-issue concept with a game of words inside words. Ages 2-6. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Seeger's First the Egg (2007) was named both a Caldecott Honor Book and Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor Book. Here, she brings her considerable ingenuity to another clever picture book that works on many levels. On its surface, it is a one-to-ten counting book, illustrated with bright, simple pictures in saturated colors and heavy black outlines. Precise die cuts in every other page add another level of sophistication. On a two-page spread, text on the left identifies what's to be counted THREE APES, for example while a die cut in the right-hand page exposes a picture of the subject through the hole. Turn the page, and the die cut frames a piece of the text from the previous spread, incorporating it into a new phrase that spells out a new situation BIG ESCAPE that is illustrated on the opposite page. And if that weren't enough, the final spread links the entire book together with a string of consecutive images that is delightfully surprising. More than just a picture book to be enjoyed by countless counting toddlers, this offers deft wordplay to engage beginning readers, and enough provocative substance to entertain older children as well. A delight for a wide audience.--Barthelmess, Thom Copyright 2008 Booklist

PreS-Gr 2-Seeger's ability to transform everyday words and objects into an amazing concept book continues with One Boy. Using the numbers 1 through 10, her signature die-cut pages, and a vocabulary that is designed to show words inside other words, the author has engineered a tribute to wordplay that is unmatched. On readers' first trip through the text, it will appear that the 10 objects are loosely linked only by their spelling patterns ("Two seals,/At the sea"; "Ten ants/In your pants"). As the story concludes, however, it becomes clear that all of the art was painted by the "one boy" who started it all. Youngsters will quickly return to the beginning to study the paintings more closely. While preschoolers will enjoy the book's design and take pleasure in guessing at what is next to appear, it is children who are beginning to develop their sight vocabulary who will most appreciate Seeger's efforts. This is one boy who won't be left alone for long.-Maura Bresnahan, High Plain Elementary School, Andover, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(Preschool, Primary) Seeger's latest intriguing concept book (Lemons Are Not Red, rev. 1/05; First the Egg, rev. 11/07) is both a counting book and a hidden-words book in which a seemingly random sequence is plausibly resolved on the last spread. Windows cut through each heavy page reveal "one boy," "two seals," "three apes," etc. Thick black outlines and bright, solid colors make no mystery about what we are seeing through each right-hand-page window, so the youngest participants can simply count the animals or items. The more challenging part, for beginning readers, comes on the page turn when the window appears on the left and shows three letters of the previous spread's text, now incorporated into a short description of the picture. So "one boy" is "all alone," with the last three letters of alone coming from the previous spread's one. Tricky! Some spread pairs form small stories ("three apes" are shown through a barred window die-cut while the page turn reveals that they have now escaped; the next spread shows "four monkeys" who "held the key"), but most are unrelated. In the final spread, the "one boy" (shown with paintbrushes in the first spread) is now "all done" and walks off the page to reveal ten paintings taped to the wall, exactly matching the art in the book. So who is this book for -- small children learning to count, or older ones learning to read? It seems pretty clear that this is "one to grow on." From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.