Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the Lap Listeners stage.
Why it fits Lap Listeners (for babies in their first year, when books are about your voice, not the plot)
Babies born all over the world share the same ten fingers and toes in this rolling rhyme. The counting refrain invites touching each finger and toe as you read - rhythm plus sensation. A celebration of sameness across difference, from the very first read.
What makes it special
Its quiet radicalism is showing babies from everywhere sharing one refrain and one lap. Helen Oxenbury's round, luminous babies are the gold standard of infant illustration — each one a specific person, not a generic cherub. It plants global belonging at an age when the world is otherwise shrinking to a single nursery.
From the publisher
Rhyming text compares babies born in different places and in different circumstances, but they all share the commonality of ten little fingers and ten little…
About Mem Fox
Mem Fox is Australia's best-known picture-book author and spent 24 years as an associate professor of literacy education — her books are engineered, syllable by syllable, from what she taught about how children acquire language. Reading Magic, her guide for parents, is a modern classic on reading aloud.
Raised in Zimbabwe by missionary parents, Fox wrote her first book, Possum Magic, as a college assignment; it was rejected nine times, then became the best-selling Australian children's book in history.
Also by this author: Possum Magic · Where Is the Green Sheep? · Koala Lou
More from “Sing It, Say It Again”
This book is part of The Best Books for Babies: 30 Teacher Picks (Lap Listeners) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.