AMAZING AND INCREDIBLE COUNTING STORIES!

Subtitled ``A Number of Tall Tales,'' this book's loopy headlines—``Sleepless Residents Upset by 2 Giant Banjos'' and ``11 Telephones Found Growing in the Woods''—reach out to grab readers while explanations at the bottom of the page are written for maximum laughs. They are almost always fun; by putting numbers in comic situations—with their pants down, so to speak—Grover (The Accidental Zucchini, 1993, etc.) demystifies them and strips them of their tendency to cause anxiety. The paintings are wondrously bright, oscillating between campy humor and pure absurdity. Readers will certainly count the objects, be they donuts or spoons, chimneys or radio refrigerators, just to make sure that Grover hasn't pulled a fast one. A full-blast chuckle machine that doubles, very quietly, as a book about numbers. (Picture book. 4-8)