One Boy (review)

This exercise in page-turn surprises opens with a grass-green background, the numeral 1, and the phrase “one boy,” while on the facing page, said boy sits beside a satchel of paint brushes and peeks out of a die-cut hole in the black background. Flip the leaf and the phrase “all alone” appears on the verso, with the letters o-n-e on the preceding spread now framed by the die cut, and the boy now shown on the recto in a room full of empty chairs. Seeger makes her way toward ten with similar transformations—“two seals” reappear in the following spread, lazing on a beach “at the sea,” as the s-e-a chain anchors the pair of scenes. After reaching ten ants in the p ants , Seeger wraps it up with a composite of the scenes, now taped to a white wall; the one boy and his drippy paintbrushes exit, all d one . This could be more cohesive, and the concept of one word’s nesting in another will be a stretch for some youngsters, but the game aspect has distinct appeal. The simplified designs, with figures heavily outlined in black and sporting bold matte colors, will be enjoyed by youngsters as young as the board-book crowd, but it’s solid enough for word-learning older kids, too. While smaller youngsters may catch onto the patterning as they flip the pages back and forth, this may find its most appreciative audience among emerging readers, who will enjoy scouring their own picture books for cleverly camouflaged words.