One Is Not A Pair is a great book for keeping a child occupied during a journey! The book invites you to peruse its beautifully illustrated double spreads to look for matching pairs before finding the one item on the page that doesn’t have a partner.
Each of the fourteen double page spreads focuses on a particular item and includes modes of transport and natural objects as well as toys and food. There are various differences in the illustrations and all but one of the items is one of a pair. But can you spot the odd sock? Which pair of cherries doesn’t match any of the others? Which cat doesn’t have a twin?
The rhyming text is easy to read and indicates what you should be looking for in each picture. We found it difficult to find the odd teddy bear (they are all brown!) and it took us a while to find the odd toadstool as there were so many spots to count! We’re huge fans of Brtta Teckentrup’s illustrations which are bold and colourful and I particularly like the pages with the trees and the bugs on the leaves, my daughter loves the teddy bears.
The final double spread provides the biggest challenge of all. It’s a very ‘busy’ spread with a mix of all the items that have been included in the book and as with the other pages you are invited to match the pairs and discover which item is the odd one out. It took us a while but we finally found it!
One Is Not A Pair is a great book to share and can even inspire competitiveness! Can you find the odd item before your reading partner? The book can also be used to help younger children practise numeracy skills including counting, talking about differences in size and the act of matching is important for both early numeracy and literacy. Many of the pictures can also be used to help colour recognition especially the coloured pencils, the collars on the cats and the wooden blocks. A fun classroom activity would be for a child to create a page for a class One Is Not A Pair book, it would be so interesting to see the range of objects the children would include.
Age Range: 3 +
Author: Katie Haworth / Illustrator: Britta Teckentrup
Britta has also illustrated Where’s the Pair? which is another book that invites you to match the pictures. Big Picture Press has produced a lovely set of spotting postcards based on the book. The pull out postcards include animals, birds, fish and insects and provide a great incentive for a child to write to a friend or relative. Hopefully a set based on One Is Not A Pair is also in production!
Thank you to Big Picture Press for sending One Is Not A Pair and the Where’s The Pair spotting postcards. We had a lot of fun ‘spotting’!
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