Counting on Fall is the first in a quartet of books that uses the seasons to illustrate mathematical concepts. The book challenges young readers to count, add, subtract, group, estimate, and determine order using animals and other natural elements. Each spread features a playful, richly textured autumnal scene beautifully rendered in cut-paper collage by Toronto’s Ashley Barron. The art and simple statement/question structure gear the book particularly well to use in the classroom, where a reading could be followed by a collage craft to engage tactile learners with mathematical principles.

The book is also great for beginning readers to tackle on their own. Former chickaDEE magazine editor Lizann Flatt creates text that, though structurally simple, uses a variety of literary devices; internal rhyme, changes in rhythm, and alliteration abound. There are also a lot of uncommon words here (like pika and milkweed pods), but the book’s artwork and an illustrated glossary help demystify the unfamiliar.

The only disappointing element is the final page, which features this couplet: “So … nature knowing numbers? No, not really true. / The only creatures who need numbers? Actually, just you!” The singsong rhyme feels out of place with the lyrical tone set by the rest of the book.

Dinosaur Countdown uses a consistent, predictable numeral-adjective-noun structure to count backward from 10 to zero. Each spread in this playful book by author/illustrator Nicholas Oldland (The Busy Beaver ) features a gaggle of cartoon dinos with pinpoint pupils and delightfully crazed expressions. There’s enough here to engage every junior paleontologist, including lots of tough names (such as pterodactyl, deinonychus, and deinosuchus). A pronunciation guide at the end of the book will help readers put it all together, and kids will be rattling off the weird words in no time.

The numerical conceit is straightforward, but the illustrations aren’t always clear about the meaning of the adjectives. For example, “two towering tyrannosaurus” features a pair of the big guys, but without anything else for them to tower over; “three rearing dinosaurs” could be rearing, or chatting, or hailing a cab.

As with Counting on Fall, the final page doesn’t entirely satisfy. Here, zero is explained as “none.” But zero doesn’t always mean none; for multiples of 10, it means something very different. This may be a minor quibble given the target audience, but it’s difficult to argue against the importance of getting the basics correct right from the beginning.