Art 123

K-Gr 2—Zuffi provides a puzzlelike approach to counting objects in selected works of art. Readers can count from 1 to 12 in the first dozen artworks and then jump to counting "so many" in the final selection. Each piece appears opposite a pertinent rhyming sentence or two and large bold numerals indicating how many items to find in each picture. Some can be challenging to locate. Readers count people, kittens, sun rays, shapes, boats, flowers. Also paired opposite the artworks are the titles of the works, the names of the artists, and the location of the pieces. Finger positions on silhouetted hands, placed on the numeral page, reinforce the number of objects to find. Hopper, Matisse, Van Gogh, and Renoir are among the featured painters. This picture book works well as a concept book and as a resource for stimulating art appreciation. Other titles with a similar approach include Glorina Taborin's Norman Rockwell's Counting Book (Abrams, 1977) and Lucy Micklethwait's I Spy Two Eyes: Numbers in Art (Greenwillow, 1993). Because the size of the images varies, Art 123 would be best used for one-on-one sharing. It is a worthy extra purchase for libraries needing more counting or art-appreciation materials.—Lynn Vanca, Freelance Librarian, Akron, OH