1 Teddy Bear

I'm a firm believer you can never have enough stuffed animals, but is the same true for books about them? 

THREE PROS

*I will never tire of giving credit to efforts that master the arts of pacing, rhyming, and layout (albeit I wish they could have given #1 and #2 their own separate pages)

*Teaches singular vs. plural and its relation to sentence structure (whether this was intentional or an unintended byproduct we'll never know)

*Some of the bears have little humanoid toys to cuddle with -- I'm a sucker for this

THREE CONS 

*Some basic addition or subtraction could have vaulted this to higher heights, even if it was just one tiny math situation to stimulate the brain -- maybe I am asking too much here given the target age

*I couldn't decide if I would have liked it more if the same teddy bears were used in each image instead of bringing in a new crop of bears on each page

*There are some scenes where each bear is amusingly interacting with a prop in a different manner -- this left me wanting when I reached other pages where they are all doing virtually the exact same thing 

ONE DAD'S OPINION

I tried super hard to find something wrong with this one.  There's nothing groundbreaking about it and it's simplicity makes me feel like there has to be something missing.  Then again, publishing children's books isn't rocket science (it's just that way more authors turn out products that seem like the equivalent of a failed 4th grade egg parachute than a revolutionary lunar landing module).  So maybe I should cut these plush critters some slack.  The bears accomplished their goal in providing a quality counting book for the tiniest of tykes. Enough said.  Still, I'm starting to wonder if I need to make an "Best of the Best" list for books that are truly are in a class all their own (a category that this title would not find itself in).  Oh well, that's homework for another day...

BUY / Borrow / Donate / Destroy