Review - Counting Animals with Lily and Milo

Counting Animals with Lily and Milo
by Pauline Oud
Date: 2020
Publisher: Clavis Publishing
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

A new entry in the Lily and Milo series.

Lily and Milo take a walk in the meadow. What do they see? Animals. So many animals!

Can you count the animals along with Lily and Milo?

A cheerful story about animals and counting. For toddlers ages 24 months and up, with a focus on language development.

(synopsis from NetGalley; see it on Goodreads)

While the illustrations and premise may look really simple, this is a surprisingly well-done counting book for toddlers.

Lily (a rabbit) and Milo (a mouse) go for a walk in the meadow. They encounter lots of critters and proceed to count them. Each spread is devoted to a number, and readers are encouraged to count the animals along with Lily and Milo.

If I have one complaint, it's that the adult reading the book really needs to be paying attention or there could be some confusion when it comes time to count. For example, on one page the reader is encouraged to count the "swimming fish". There are supposed to be ten, but there's also technically one more fish that's leaping out of the water, bringing the count to eleven. (The same sort of thing happens with mother animals and their babies; readers are told to count just the babies, but since the mother is also depicted in the spread, there might be some confusion.) Hopefully, kids' literal thinking will take care of this problem. Who knows? Maybe it's just something I noticed as an adult.

The text is technically strong and the illustrations are fairly clear (other than the previously mentioned issue). This is probably one of the stronger counting books I've read recently.

Thank you to NetGalley and Clavis Publishing for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 4/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.67 out of 5