From the Garden

Michael Dahl is the prolific author of the bestselling Goodnight, Baseball picture book and more than 200 other books for children and young adults. He has won the Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Award three times for his nonfiction, a Teachers’ Choice Award from Learning Magazine, and a Seal of Excellence from the Creative Child Awards. Dahl currently lives in Minnesota.

Counting, hidden numbers to find, and fun facts are included in these two books. The first one presents 11 vegetables, from 1 tomato to 11 peppers, resulting in 12 plates of salad for a family. Each page records the harvesting with sentences featuring 11 different verbs and alliteration adjectives and nouns, which will encourage vocabulary expansion. The second title describes construction from the ground up, with "One big plan for making a big building" to a handy enumeration of the machines needed to complete it, culminating with "Twelve stories tall, the new building gleams in the sun." "Fun Facts" includes information about the world's tallest structure (the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario) and a listing of occupations connected with construction. In both books, bright, bold illustrations on full spreads make the items easy to count. Multiple uses and learning opportunites make these titles useful purchases.