Discovering Numbers

One of a quartet of trilingual books by Neepin Auger, a Cree artist, educator, and mother, Discovering Numbers, was originally published as a board book in 2019 and has now been reissued in a paperback format with new cover art. Essentially, Discovering Numbers is a “counting” book with its principal focus being the cardinal numbers from 0-10. Each number is treated on a single page, with the number being followed by its English, (bolded) French and (italicized) Cree spellings.

For each number, Auger provides a simple illustration that provides objects equal in number to that page’s focus. While the items to be counted are not identified in words, most, like the three owls or the six butterflies, will be readily recognized by the book’s readers; however, for the items to be counted connected to the numbers 7 and 8, Auger has drawn from her cultural heritage, and the identity of these items may not be familiar to the wider community. Fortunately, near the end of the book, Auger provides a page in which she reproduces thumbnails of the 0 to 10 illustrations and identifies what they are. There, readers learn that the objects connected to the number seven were braids of sweetgrass while the eight “sticks” were actually teepee pegs.

Following the 0-10 section, Auger uses the next nine pages to present the tens, from 20-100, with just the numbers and their three language word equivalents appearing on the page but nothing for the children to actually count. The usefulness of these pages is questionable. One of the challenges of reprinting a board book in a different physical format aimed at an older audience is ensuring that its contents remain relevant. Perhaps this is a case where these pages should have been repurposed to teach children how to count the “teens” and to provide them with the pattern for counting from one ten to the next, i.e., 21-29.

The book’s final four pages are given over to a “Pronunciation Guide” in which each number is followed by its English word equivalent and the French and Cree translations. Something different in this book is that, after the English word for the number, Auger identifies, in brackets, what the illustration was of. However, there is no French or Cree translation of this English object word. Auger appears to assume that the book’s readers’ first language is English as the pronunciation assistance is only provided for the French and Cree words.

2 two (fish) deux niso
deuh neeso

The polyglot aspect of Discovering Numbers would make it a useful home purchase in those situations in which more than one of the book’s languages is being spoken.