Books in Play Mask Books series

This book helps children to count forwards and backwards using numbers to ten with the added element of music. Like other books in this series, it is a pattern book with a verse repeating over and over so any child can quickly sing along. The multi-national children are on a dial at the back of the book so as one falls out you turn the dial. The next page shows the child on the floor with the others that fell out. Match the child on the floor to the children on the dial and you have numbers up to nineteen. Numbers in a sequence are merely a rhyme or verse to children until they can match "things" to the numbers...Eight children, count them as 8 not just as the middle word in a line "7-8-9. This book also lends itself well to a social studies lesson when used in conjunction with a map.

This book takes children through real settings, imaginary ones and then back to real again. This is done by the use of a felt train attached to a ribbon which enables the child to pull it through the slots of each page. The train starts out at a city station, travels through farm country, through woods, across a river into a funny glen, through an underground world of animals, past a giant mountain, a big dipper, a spook junction and a seaside resort. As well as the books' entertainment value, it provides an opportunity for conversation and lends itself to the discussion of what is real and what is imagined. (Many of the things that frighten children live only in the imagination.)