Don’t count on the quality of children’s counting books

Children‘s literature books, more specifically, early counting books, can be an engaging means for exploring numeracy with young children. Although there is general consensus in the current literature supporting the integration of high-quality children‘s books to teach mathematics; a user-friendly instrument to guide the evaluation of early counting books does not exist. Consequently, I created an instrument to encourage teachers to think more critically about the quality of early counting books utilized to teach mathematics. The methodology for creating the instrument framework was founded on an extensive literature review and previously developed instruments. The instrument was tested and validated by multiple reviewers, including evaluations by expert in the field (i.e., math consultants, mathematics and Language Arts faculty, education librarians, practicing elementary teachers). The purpose of this paper is to introduce the instrument; provide an overview of its development and design, including themes to emerge from the literature which form the foundation for the instrument; describe the categories and corresponding prompts on the instrument; and illustrate how the instrument is used to evaluate the quality of well-known counting books commonly used in elementary mathematics classrooms. Given the inconsistent quality of early counting books on the market, it is vital that teachers become critical consumers of the literature utilized for teaching elementary mathematics. As such, developing a research-based instrument that has been tested and validated is an important initial step for providing teachers with a user-friendly resource for critiquing children‘s books.