Everyone Counts: A Citizens' Number Book

Children's Literature - Debbie Levy

This large and slender volume combines elements of a counting primer, poetry book, civics manual, and history book. In trying to be all things to all readers, unfortunately, it falls short of achieving any single mission in a satisfying way. Each illustrated page (or spread) presents a number, a simple rhyming quatrain about a concept in American government, plus several detailed paragraphs explaining the concept or facts featured on page. For a book organized around a backdrop of numbers, too often it seems more random than ordered. For the number 7, for example, the quatrain presents "7 grassroots organizers," but there is no connection between the number 7 and anything in the text. Then there's the number 11, for "11 billion dollars printed in new bills," according to the quatrain—but the text explains that in fact the U.S. Treasury prints $82 billion each year. The quatrains are often more jarring than poetic. The explanatory text is written at a much higher level than the rhymes, raising questions about the target audience for this book. In the colorful and eye-catching illustrations, ordinary people are pictured as mere cartoons, but pity the famous politicians and activists who are depicted as caricatures. For number 2, a sneering Alexander Hamilton and a Jay Leno-jawed Thomas Jefferson are shown arguing with each other. The rhyme explains: "Washington didn't want them/but because there was a fight/between Jefferson and Hamilton/2 parties seemed all right." And poor Rachel Carson, whose head is so grotesquely inflated it resembles a balloon float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. An illustration of 5 Mohawk leaders who united to form the Iroquois Confederacy looks likechildren playing Indian dress-up, and is hard to reconcile with the otherwise respectful tone in the text. This numbers book simply does not add up.