123 Versus ABC by Mike Boldt (review)

The numeral 1—anthropomorphized in blue with a big mouth, thick eyebrows, and thin black arms and legs—is very happy that audiences have decided to open this book about numbers. The trouble is that the letter A (similarly concretized, though in ochre) is convinced this is a book about letters. When one alligator shows up on the scene, both glyphs claim him for their own; after the arrival of two bears in three cars (apparently bears are prodigious drivers) that are also carrying four dinosaurs with five eggs, the two go back and forth, until, after coming across twenty-five balls of yarn used to make sweaters for twenty-six zebras, they realize that this is a book about both numbers and letters. Though there's a lot of text in this picture book, it's entertaining and readable enough to be a solid readal-oud choice, and the good-natured ribbing between A and 1 marks an interesting change of pace from standard fare. The boisterous, mottled acrylic illustrations keep the bounciness going and focus tight, setting the countable and alphabetized objects against a striking white background. Boldt also sets the dialogue between the two symbols in distinctively colored speech bubbles (blue for the numbers, orange for the letters), and the book emphasizes the words used for each letter and the numeral used to count them by color coding and bolding them, which draws younger audiences' attention to the dual purpose of this book. This fresh take on hallmark books of childhood offers new interest for kids who already know the ropes of counting and alphabet books.