One cat sleeps, two cats play, three cats stack! Susie Ghahremani’s Stack the Cats is hands-down the funniest, furriest, and most gleefully complex picture book about numbers I've seen in a long time!
This adorable counting book teaches addition, subtraction, and even multiplication and division as the narrator adds cats into the illustrations and moves them around. We see cats playing and sleeping, all the while building up in number as they're stacked together in groups of three (anything more and they teeter and totter!) And when we hit 10, it's time to subtract and divide, all the way back down to a stack of three. It's so much fun, especially because the cats are accompanied by funny words, numbers, rulers, and gestures that add even more energy to the illustrations. The text is minimalism at its best, carrying readers through the story in a rhythmic and educational manner without taking away from the fun.
Speaking of illustrations, man are they crisp and colorful. Ghahremani painted in gouache and colored the illustrations digitally, and though the cats continually stand out against the background, they stay within the same warm color range: we see oranges, yellows, and golds contrasted with blue walls, carpets, and stairs. And, of course, each illustration is hilarious to boot: all the cat stacks will have readers laughing as they look at the cats' reactions to the progression in numbers.
Stack the Cats published Tuesdat from Abrams Appleseed!
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