ONE MORE WHEEL!

A large, green reptile and a beaver roll out vehicles with an ever increasing number of wheels in this counting book.

The crocodilian creature begins the counting exercise by happily riding on a unicycle and stating “One wheel!” via speech bubble. The beaver storms off in a huff—a scribbly black cloud over its head—and comes back on a bicycle declaring, “One MORE wheel!” Each page turn brings with it another vehicle with “one more wheel” than the conveyance prior as the critters try to out-do each other, shouting the titular repeated phrase. There’s a monster truck with four wheels, a five-wheeled desk chair, and a race car with six wheels. A white numeral printed in a large, colorful quarter-circle in the upper-left-hand corner indicates the number of wheels. This is useful, as several of the contraptions have wheels that are difficult to count. The roller skates’ eight wheels are too small, for instance, and many of the wheels are hard to discern as they are on the far side of the vehicles, as in the case of the nine wheels on the boat trailer/pickup truck combo. On the final double-page spread the beaver and reptile have finally joined forces to drive a 10-wheeled locomotive that pulls “ALL THE WHEELS!” Readers can then review all the contraptions that have come before with two telescoping panels that slide out in graduating sizes from the final page. Russo’s droll cartoons on white backgrounds enliven the project, as do three spinnable wheels on the cover.

Toddlers will likely enjoy the vehicles, but, as a counting book, this one doesn’t add up.