Author: Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Illustrator: Tom Lichtenheld
Published: 2012
Pages: 32
Age Range: 4+
Genre: Picture Book
Cover Score: ***
Overall Score: ****
Rating: G
First sentence: Don’t you just love making 4ts?
From the front cover: It’s a book! It’s a game! It’s words cre8ed with numbers!
This is such a fun concept. Sort of along the lines of rebus books but strictly using numbers, words are created putting numbers in the place of their matching sounds within words. Some of them you almost have to read out loud to figure out! It’s a great way to train your brain to think outside of the box. Older readers will love the puzzle/game quality of deciphering the text and as a challenge you could encourage them to come up with some of their own.
There’s not much of a storyline, just a bunch of kids doing kid things. Most of the text is in the form of speech bubbles with 1-2 sentences on a spread (the most I think had just 4) though sometimes it simply describes the illustration. Lichtenheld’s watercolor pencil illustrations are top notch as always with cartoonish appeal and bright colors (and there’s an appearance by penguins, so really, what’s not to love?)
The endpapers are more speech bubbles with random sentences asking questions in the wumber format. (Have you started paying attention to the endpapers of your books yet? You will by the time I’m through with you! *insert evil laugh and maniacal rubbing of hands together here*)
Here are a couple of my favorites:
This is kind of in10se, but do you think outer space goes on 4ever or do you think it 7tually got to end somewhere?
He pinched my belly but10!
S2pendous!
Reminiscent of William Steig’s CDB, it brings the texting spelling to a whole different level! Highly recommended!
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