Base's newest picture book will cleverly entice kids to love math and counting games--replete with a conservationist twist. The text is a moving and timely tale about how people unknowingly affect the environment and how one can always learn from mistakes and do things better.

Reviews

Mention Graeme Base, and immediately lush and fertile illustrations of the natural world spring to mind (as in his Animalia, The Water Hole and Jungle Drums). This book also bursts with vivid and magical illustrations and is concerned with getting the balance right between the natural and man-made world. Base seems to love impressive snouts with big flaring nostrils; the warthog from Jungle Drums here becomes an elusive snortlepig. The snortlepig struggles to survive in his forest when Uno, then some neighbours, move in, and eventually a whole bustling metropolis emerges and the plants and animals die out. Built into this environmentally concerned equation are Base's well-known number games with animals, plants and buildings-astute readers will love rising to the visual and mathematical challenges. Try counting the 512 buildings in one illustration of the city at its height of sterility and sadness, or, in the second half of the book, you can track the gradual increase in the number of animals and plants such as moopaloops, schmushlemushes, frinklepods and lumpybums (must be read aloud!) and maybe even see the return of the snortlepig... Educational and fun, this is recommended for ages four to eight, but older kids and adults will enjoy it too. Isabelle Benton is editor and publications manager of the Gleebooks Gleaner