The Numbers Dance: A Counting Comedy

Twirling and whirling, zigging and zagging, numerals dance across the pages, enticing children to play with numbers and develop a better understanding of numeric values in this fun and informative comic approach. Three groups of numerals make mightily concerted attempts to maintain the quirks of their distinct personalities in the face of persistent peer pressure. The irascible 1, 2, 3, and 4, though frail and wiry, would like to impose their ballroom dance style on the robust 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. 5 and 6 cannot help reverting to raucous jazz dancing, no matter how hard they sportingly try to conform, and 7-10 don't see the point of being anything but what they truly are-western line dancers. Scuffles, rumbles, round-ups, and coercions ensue until 1-4 have their way and 5-10 "go back to dancing like they want to, again!" The book's rousing, impeccably-metered rhymes provide the cadence of each dance style, and the spare accompanying art lends a clean energy to the numerals' challenge to accept each other as they are.

Association of Booksellers for Children's "Best Books for Children" list

It takes some lassoing to calm things down, and soon everyone is dancing to their own tune.

Josephine Nobisso is the award-winning author of more than 20 children's books, including In English, of Course, Show; Don't Tell!, and The Weight of Mass, which were selected as American Bookseller Association Book Sense 76 Picks. She lives in Westhampton Beach, New York. Dasha Ziborova is the illustrator of Crispin the Terrible and In English, of Course. She is a website and children's computer games designer and a big-scale mural painter. She lives in New York City.