365: How to count a year by Miranda Paul and Julien Chung

This unique take on teaching kids the calendar is both a wonderful read-aloud and an instructional guide.

Start with a year. The endpages have those 365 days, oops, wait! The lion has taken off with #365! The brown-skinned child of the cover follows the instructions of the narrator as they count days, nights, mornings, minutes, and seconds. They also count more interesting measurements, like flavors of the day, bulletin board themes, and clean underwear (hopefully 365 of those!).

The narrative builds up to one birthday, and then spirals out into hours, minutes, and seconds, then back to a single year. "1 marvelous collage of 1 year in the life of you. How will you count your year?" A spread of back matter discusses calendars, how we mark time, and explores some other possible ways to count your year, from bathroom visits to hair growth.

Miranda Paul has created a lot of interesting works with different creators and her latest collaboration is no exception. Chung's art is colorful and creative, with interesting perspectives and shapes, going along with the explorative text. There's an almost unending list of ways to use this book; in classrooms it will be useful for learning about calendars and marking time, in celebrating events like 100 days of school or any time of the year, and in a variety of ways while studying math. Libraries can use it as a fun read-aloud in storytime, to go along with changing seasons, to explore math in storytime, and as an alternative to dominant-culture holiday-themed books.

Verdict: Another multi-use, beautifully written title from Miranda Paul with a fresh, exciting collaboration with illustrator Julien Chung. Highly recommended for all collections.

ISBN: 9781665904407; Published September 2023 by Beach Lane Books; Review copy provided by publisher; Donated to the library