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A review by lattelibrarian
Anno's Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno
4.25
This book was assigned as an "illumination book" for our structuralist unit in a critical theories class. When I opened it up, I thought it looked vaguely familiar and didn't fully recognize it until I got to the 6 spread. Then, I realized that this is the same book that my mother uses in her kindergarten classroom to show her students what numbers look like both in arabic numerals as well as in quantities. Clearly, this book is a family favorite.
Overall, I love the art, the structure, and the way that it shows the passage of time as the town is constructed through the year.
But after doing our structuralist unit...oh man, this book is a wild ride. Most counting books start at 1 and then go up to 10...yet here this book is going from 0 to 12!!! And the way that time is described in this book is pretty interesting--clearly it goes from month to month, but the time on the church also depicts the designated number (but the time goes from afternoon to morning at around page 7, I believe--so then what do we make of that visualization of time passing?) Obviously, this kind of analysis is a bit overworked, but it's still interesting nonetheless that such a "simple" picturebook/counting book can create such a dialogue around it.
Review cross-listed here!
Overall, I love the art, the structure, and the way that it shows the passage of time as the town is constructed through the year.
But after doing our structuralist unit...oh man, this book is a wild ride. Most counting books start at 1 and then go up to 10...yet here this book is going from 0 to 12!!! And the way that time is described in this book is pretty interesting--clearly it goes from month to month, but the time on the church also depicts the designated number (but the time goes from afternoon to morning at around page 7, I believe--so then what do we make of that visualization of time passing?) Obviously, this kind of analysis is a bit overworked, but it's still interesting nonetheless that such a "simple" picturebook/counting book can create such a dialogue around it.
Review cross-listed here!