Zero Is The Leaves On The Tree

Praise

Picture books about numbers typically go from one up to 10. The idea of zero may be a bit more abstract, but this picture book communicates the concept in child-friendly terms: “Zero is . . . the balls in the bin at recess time. 0 balls,” or “. . . the sound of snowflakes landing on your mitten. 0 sounds,” or “the kites in the sky once the wind stops blowing. 0 kites.”…Nicely composed and often quiet in tone, Arihara’s gouache paintings illustrate those images with sensitivity.—Booklist magazine

How exactly do you define zero? Franco’s thought-provoking meditations challenge readers to move beyond conventional school-taught facts (it’s a number; it’s egg-shaped) to poetic observations about zero outside the classroom via a tour of the seasons….Cleverly upending the notion that zero amounts to nothing, the book reveals instead that zero is an absence that is observable, countable, and meaningful. —The Horn Book Review