A counting book that manages to squeeze in an actual story to boot, one that might be pleasing to the PETA crowd.

I do have to take issue with the drawing of buckets stacked for numbers 3 and 4. As drawn . . .
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https://i.imgur.com/gqaCd6A.jpg
. . . the buckets should be nested within each other instead of magically floating in a pile three buckets high. The bottom bucket would have to be as tall as three normal buckets, and the middle one as tall as two normal buckets to make this arrangement work -- and the middle bucket would be completely unnecessary since it would actually be adding no height, just serving the aesthetic. Alternatively, the buckets would need to be filled with some substance that would stay in place when turned upside down. Concrete would be too heavy for a chicken to lift, and it appears to be summer, so it can't be ice either (which is also damn heavy). But, hey, these farm animals figured out how to type, so I suppose I need to let go of what is just another fantasy element . . . ( )

Independent Reading Level: Grades Preschool - 3. ( )

00010391

A good book for early readers that are learning to count ( )

Farmer Brown and all the animals from Click, Clack, Moo are back in this counting book. The illustrations of the familiar characters might be a draw for many readers, but this book falls a bit flat. It really only contains the number on each page with a few words (e.g., "3 buckets piled high"), and the story is so slim, it's hardly worth being called a story. An adult caregiver would have to fill in a lot of details for the young audience to truly get what's going on in the pages of this book. Typically, Cronin writes fantastic books; unfortunately, this is not one of those. ( )