Hands Down

Michael Dahl is the prolific author of the bestselling Goodnight, Baseball picture book and more than 200 other books for children and young adults. He has won the Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Award three times for his nonfiction, a Teachers’ Choice Award from Learning Magazine, and a Seal of Excellence from the Creative Child Awards. Dahl currently lives in Minnesota.

Know Your Numbers is a delightful series for young children that can be used to introduce kindergarten students to skip counting. The books can also be used in a shared reading or a read-aloud for first graders, or for independent reading or guided reading groups. The books can be used as independent readers at the beginning of second grade as well. I used these books with kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders, and all the children enjoyed them. This series lends itself nicely for integrating mathematics with reading. The text is large enough that each book can be used as if it were a big book. The books are great as a read-aloud to start a mathematics lesson. Teachers should allow time for the children to discuss the book, the children will be eager to share the connections that they have with the story and to relate the mathematics concepts that they see. The format for the series includes predictable text and a growing pattern. The amount on each page is shown in dots and numbers, and the number is hidden in the illustrations. When reading the books in a small-group setting, some children did have difficulty reading the number words in all capital letters. After the second reading, however, they better understood the pattern and could read the capitalized number words with ease. The illustrations are done in collage. They are bright and appealing, and they nicely support the text. The font appears to be handwriting; children will point this out. Children will want to read these books over and over again. They can make their own versions of the books to help them with skip counting by fives. At the end of each book are some fun facts, a Web site, an explanation of where to find the missing numbers hidden in the illustrations, and a list of other books in the series. I would recommend this series of books for any primary-grade teacher.