Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose

* "As they explain, the Dillons "offer children an invitation to...playful, energetic, magical, even at times mischievous numbers" with rhymes both well- and lesser-known, progressing "from rhymes with smaller numbers to those with larger numbers." Thus, their selection of a couple of dozen rhymes doubles as an offbeat counting book; but their sunny, crisply rendered art does much more: in honoring the "fantastical quality of Mother Goose," the illustrators have created a sweetly surreal space inhabited by humans (often wearing masks: it's a false nose that the maid in "Sing a Song of Sixpence" loses to a blackbird), animals clothed or au naturel, dancing numerals, a clock with arms to ring its own alarm, a boat-rowing fish, and whimsical sizes (a tiny elf catches a huge "hare alive"). Such intriguing details broaden the meaning on every page, and if the literal-minded can't always find precisely the number in question ("From Wibbleton to Wobbleton is 15 miles") in the pictures, there are plenty of other clearly delineated things to count and discuss. A charming and original vision that's also just plain beautiful: this Mother Goose belongs in the permanent canon." (starred review)