Paul Giganti

a. This counting book by Paul Giganti, Jr, illustrated by Donald Crews is a fun and different counting book as it actually does not have any numbers written in it. I enjoyed how the questions build off of one another, encouraging math skill development. It shows a few different types of animals and encourages children to count them, throughout the book and to spot the differences in the imagery. Not just “how many fish are red and how many are yellow?”, but “How many fish were there? How many fish were red? How many fish were red and had their mouths open?” (Giganti). This allows for children to count but also to notice subtle differences. I would read this in the classroom, children would enjoy this book and would be running as close to the pages as possible to count.… (more)

How Many Blue Birds Flew Away is a book that prompts the reader with questions of subtraction. The reader is taken threw an average school environment and is given normal, everyday objects to count and subtract. This encourages children at their own schools to count and subtract the object that they see. The pictures were vital to the story and are to be used as a visual aid for readers to count and subtract from. I can definitely see this book used in an elementary math class or used in a small math station/cluster.… (more)