26 Letters and 99 Cents

As is sometimes the case, my daughter requests a book over and over again much to my surprise. 26 Letters and 99 Cents by Tana Hoban is such a book, something we stumbled across in the library.

The book is two-in-one. One side of the book contains the letters of the alphabet - both upper case and lower case, along side a picture of a toy or a piece of fruit or some other kind of object that illustrates the letter. The version we checked out was dated - the pictures look like something from the '80s - but each image is colorful and my daughter liked talking about the connection between the letter and the object.

Flip the book over and each page is devoted to numbers.  For example, the number 4 is accompanied by 4 pennies while the number 5 is shown next to a nickel. My daughter doesn't grasp money yet so pointing to the coins has proven fruitless.  But she likes to recite the numbers out loud with me.  At some point, the book begins to count by 5 which is way beyond what my 3 year-old is managing with numbers.

Still, it's fun to flip the book, and she likes the colorful pictures. It also is fun for her to shout out something that she has been learning.  So this isn't necessarily a good night book but it's can be a fun take on counting on reciting the alphabet during a slow afternoon.