Can Peg and Cat figure out the winning pattern? Friendly competition between bunks at summer camp leads to a hands-on lesson in counting by fives and tens.
It's summertime at Camp Niniwawa. Peg, Cat, and their friends Aki and Richard are in the Gopher bunk -- Gophers, they always go for it! Arts and crafts is a welcome distraction from homesickness for Richard, whose love of patterns helps him build a red-and-blue Popsicle-stick ladder. When the Raccoon bunk challenges the Gophers to a friendly battle of the bunks, it's on! Winning a contest earns a bunk ten points -- but being a good sport is also important, and that earns five points. Can they get the hang of counting by fives and tens to figure out which bunk will reach one hundred points first? And when a tug-of-war lands the Raccoons up in a tree, can Richard's knack for repeating patterns solve the problem?
Jennifer Oxley is an author, illustrator, television writer/director, and the recipient of multiple Emmy Awards for her work on Nick Jr.’s Little Bill and as co-creator of PBS’s Peg+Cat. Jennifer lives and works in New York City as an independent filmmaker and artist.
Peg + Cat is a current show on PBS for the younger crowd. This book is for beginning readers and includes math, patterns, and other problem solving. The characters are away at camp, one is homesick, but that doesn't relate to the rest of the book, other than a pattern he creates. There is a camp competition started after the camp groups both stated that they are not competitive, which seemed a bit odd to me. Readers will learn tips on counting by fives and tens. Fans of the show will most likely enjoy this book, as it uses some phrasing familiar to fans and has illustrations that they will recognize, but I thought it was just ok. The illustrations were too busy for my taste.
But in the meantime... it's inspired by an apparently Emmy-winning TV series, and kids will probably enjoy it well enough. There are some messages about helping others and giving things a go, as well as how to count... but the writing is lacking at times, and it also preaches about everyone being a winner which, if you ask me, is just setting kids up for a shock when they hit the real world and people don't bend over backwards to make sure everyone gets a prize.