A million dots
Book Details
A million dots
Sven Völker. London: Cicada, hb. 978 1 9087 1466 4, 2019, £12.95, 44pp.
Picture book, non fiction, 6-12 years
The dot creating one tree is doubled to two dots therefore two trees. 2 dots + 2 dots become four apples on the trees. 4 + 4 sees 8 apples on the ground. 8 + 8 = 16 and our sixteen dots are found on…… well I won’t spoil that for you, but you get the idea.
This doubling of each sum goes on and on until the last pages stretch to many thousands and over a million dots. This is a beautiful book for counting games. Children love to count the dots, but what happens when there are too many dots to count? It created some amazing discussions in the classroom and is also something that can be used in an art class introducing artists such as Seurat and pointillism.
The very graphic nature of the illustrations align themselves to the mathematical concept of the book. The book can be used in many ways. It accentuates a sense of wonder as the numbers get bigger and bigger and this further highlighted through the pull out pages towards the end.
A very clever book that promotes numerous scenarios for curious children, and has been listed in the New York Times top 10 best illustrated children’s books of 2019.
Review by Dr. Karenanne Knight