Stack the Cats
Author and illustrator Susie Ghahremani’s first solo picturebook Stack the Cats is a delight for both adults and young readers alike. Even before opening the book, the cover’s bright and exciting colours will induce young and old to read onward. Susie Ghahremani’s unique illustrations are also easily recognisable from her previous collaborations with Jennifer Ward What Will Hatch? and What Will Grow?
This book, aimed at allowing children to explore numbers and counting using a much beloved animal, does not disappoint. The fun illustrations match the text beautifully, enabling children to count along the various pages. The large font encourages children to recognise familiar sight words and make connections between written and visual representations of numbers also. Educationally, this makes the book Stack the Cats ideal for young children entering the world of maths for the first time. The focus in this book is not on plot but this certainly does not make the book any less enjoyable.
The introduction of early mathematical ideas, from a teacher’s perspective, is useful and will certainly result in curiosity and questions from eager learners. I would highly recommend this book for children aged 0-4, 5-7.
