Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco

Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco

Heads up: This post is going to be light on text and heavy on images.

I am over-the-moon delighted with Miguel Tanco’s Count On Me.

OVER THE MOON.

It’s a picture book about a little girl who loves math and sees it everywhere she goes. It’s about embracing our passions and about the joy that embracing said passions—and sharing our love of them—can bring us.

One of the things I particularly like about the storyline is that it really is a TRULY joyful book—no one gives anyone else a hard time about their interests. In other words, this isn’t a book about a kid who has to convince people that her interests are valid or that she’s not a weirdo for liking what she likes.

Her father loves art, her mother loves science, her brother loves music, and while the book focuses on our heroine’s love of math, no one’s interest is portrayed as more or less important than anyone else’s. Which, I have found, is not as common as you’d think? I have read a LOT of books about groundbreaking women in STEM fields over the last few years, and a surprising number of them lean into the NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS mentality—as in, Grace Hopper was into MATH, unlike those OTHER girls, who were total SQUARES because they liked COOKING—which drives me right up the wall. Breaking into traditionally male-dominated fields? YAY! Slapping down traditionally female-dominated fields in order to celebrate that? BOO!!

Ahem. Slid into a rant there, sorry.

(Actually, no, I’m NOT sorry, it’s annoying. And, like I said, more common than you might expect.)

Back to the book at hand! I love this spread not JUST because of the Hamlet reference, but because it shows her trying—and not necessarily disliking, despite her lack of natural talent—various art forms:

Spread from Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco, via Edelweiss.

And I love this next one, which starts to bring in the I SEE MATH EVERYWHERE AND I LOVE IT theme:

Spread from Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco, via Edelweiss.

I also ADORE the facial expressions in this book, from the blonde ballerina who’s so horrified by our heroine’s dancing to our heroine’s I AM PERFECTLY AWARE THAT I’M SUPPOSED TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE SORRY NOT SORRY response to her art teacher:

Detail from Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco, via Edelweiss.

Detail from Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco, via Edelweiss.

There’s also a playground spread that features a kid who is LITERALLY SHAKING HIS FIST AT THE SKY because he’s so mad about the traffic jam that our heroine creates at the top of the slide because she’s so focused on looking at the curve of said slide, and it makes me laugh every time i look at it.

Everywhere she looks, it is MATH, MATH, MATH. Shapes and patterns are reflected everywhere, like her checkerboard on top of a tile floor and a building block city next to a window looking over a real-life city, and on and on.

LOOK AT THE FRACTAL TREES:

Spread from Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco, via Edelweiss.

Detail from Count On Me, by Miguel Tanco, via Edelweiss.

And bonus, look at the detail of how Tanco drew these ridiculous dogs:

I love this all so much, I can’t even.

And on TOP of it all, there’s a six-page section at the end that breaks down and explains a lot of the concepts depicted throughout the book, and the whole thing is just a treasure.

A TREASURE!!