• How Many Baby Pandas? by Sandra Markle (Walker, $15.99, ages 4 to 8) -- Youngsters learn basic counting skills as they view photographs of the eight super-cute panda pairs born in 2005 at China's ...

• The Numberlys (Atheneum, $17.99, ages 3 to 7) by William Joyce, illustrated by Christina Ellis: “Once upon a time there was no alphabet. Only numbers,” begins the whimsical book. The ...

BAD ALPHABET and counting books are easy to come by these days. Because the market for children’s books continues to grow despite the recession, some publishers rush to print books of dubious quality.

Two Jan Thornhill primers published in the late 1980s unite in the paper-over-board The Wildlife ABC & 123: A Nature Alphabet & Counting Book. Her iconic portraits combine with rhyming couplets in the ...