A Million Dots    by Andrew Clements & Mike Reed Order:  USA  Can Simon & Schuster, 2006 (2006) Hardcover     Reviewed by Hilary Williamson In A Million Dots, Andrew Clements leads young readers down the path to understanding what a million really means, aided by Mike Reed's delightful, dot-filled pictures. It starts with a page that's blank except for one small dot ... 'One dot is not very many. / It's only one, and that's just one more than none.' Author and illustrator show more dots - 10, 100, 500, 1000 - and then promise to show a million! They start by telling us that a mosquito's wings beat 600 times a second, and continue with more engagingly illustrated statistical facts, adding each to an accumulating total. Factoids presented include: the number of steps to the top of the Empire State Building; how many miles the Earth travels around the Sun each hour; the weight in pounds of an adult sperm whale; how often a person blinks each week; the speed of light; the number of words in 46 Sherlock Holmes adventures; and (my favorite) the number of chocolate milk cartons needed to fill a swimming pool. When they finish with all of these (both serious and silly) numbers, the total is a million. This unusual number crunching picture book concludes, 'Like I said so many dots ago, a MILLION is a lot of dots!' A Million Dots will intrigue older kids, who will appreciate the frivolous facts, enjoy having fun with numbers, and perhaps launch their own counting games. Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons. Find more Kids books on our Shelves or in our book Reviews