Count on the Subway

For one little girl, a jaunt on the New York subway is a great opportunity to count from one ("1 MetroCard") to ten ("10 friends sway, boogie and bop...") and back down again. The pleasantly rhyming and nicely cadenced text is full of the sights and sounds of a (sanitized) subway ride. Yaccarino's graphically dynamic, crayon-box-colorful illustrations feature cheery retro-looking passengers.

For one nattily attired little girl, a jaunt on the subway is a great opportunity to count from one ("1 MetroCard") to ten ("10 friends sway, boogie and bop…") and back down again: "1 station, central and grand. / Momma and me, hand in hand." The pleasantly rhyming and nicely cadenced text is full of the sights and sounds of a (sanitized) subway ride. The colorful illustrations feature cheery retro-looking passengers -- commuters, babies, buskers, kids, shoppers, and a couple of dogs -- hustling and bustling underground. Shout-outs to some New York City stations and train lines ("Find the 7 at Times Square") give readers their bearings, but familiarity with the city isn't at all necessary to enjoy the ride. Yaccarino's graphically dynamic pictures, done with brush and ink on vellum and with Photoshop, pop with crisp lines and solid blocks of dazzling crayon-box colors. The clean page design encourages young children to participate in counting the objects and people mentioned in the text. A journey uptown on the 3 and cross-town on the 7 is usually pretty unremarkable, but readers on this brightly lit subterranean trip will undoubtedly be frequent riders. kitty flynn