NUMBERS

“One Baby Bee” has other creatures to meet before she finds her 10 “buzzy” siblings.

First Baby Bee meets “Two wiggly worms,” passes “Three pretty flowers” to see “Four noisy birds,” and so on—the even-numbered animals all popping up in groups from beneath big, sturdy flaps (puzzlingly, the even numbers are not printed in boldface). Fuzziness rules in the pictures, as the bee (there seems to be only one, multiplied for the final scene) looks like a decorated yellow tennis ball, and, except for a flowerpot, a birdhouse, and nine wooden apples, all of the figures in the sunny garden scenes are crocheted or made from felt or cloth. The “hive” (actually, as is all too common, a wasps’ nest) Baby Bee’s family lives in has a soft, sculptural quality. Materials are more varied in the co-published First Words, in which some three dozen labeled toys, paper images, plastic and plush food, articles of clothing, and fabric play figures (including, as the only humanoid, white “Daisy Dolly”) aim to expand toddlers’ vocabularies significantly. Both volumes sport rounded corners and are printed on heavy, wipeable card stock.

Interactive, reasonably durable, and (except for that “hive”) respectably informative entries in an above-average series.