Children's

Counting on the Classics

This weekend, our dear friends gave our 14-month-old daughter her first volume of classic literature, Pride and Prejudice. Well, it’s not the version she might encounter by high school, but a new baby-friendly counting primer. Here’s an excerpt:
1 English village 2 rich gentlemen 3 houses 4 marriage proposals 5 sisters
Actually, that’s half the entire book (at least I didn’t give away the ending!). This “Little Miss Austen” edition, by Jennifer Adams (with art by Alison Oliver), is a product of BabyLit, which has also put out classics such as Jane Eyre, Alice in Wonderland, and Romeo and Juliet in 10-page, picture-and-number board-book form. I happen to think this is a wonderful idea. I hope they make more. So here are some of my suggestions—including a few they are probably yet to (and never will) consider—with excerpts.   A Tale of Two Cities
1 tale 2 cities 5 years 100s of severed heads
  War and Peace
1 Napoleonic invasion 5 aristocratic families 131 main characters 1,440 pages
  The Catcher in the Rye
1 angst-riddled breakdown 2 nuns 3 days in New York City 44 uses of the word “phony”
  Animal Farm
1 pig-instigated revolution 2 legs bad 4 legs good 7 commandments
  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1 motorcycle race 2 or more versions of reality 6 types of recreational drug 14 visions of anthropomorphic desert animals
  Middlesex
1 Pulitzer Prize 2 gender identities  
The Hunger Games
1 annoying cat 2 adolescent love interests 13 districts 24 tributes 23,500,000 copies sold  
Some other obvious possibilities include Two Gentlemen of Verona, Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22, and 100 Years of Solitude. What are your suggestions?