How Big is a Million?

Pipkin the penguin goes on an adventure to find out how big a million is. On the way, he counts ten fish, one hundred penguins in a huddle, and one thousand snowflakes. Then when he gets home, his mum shows him one million stars in the sky!

 

This book would make a good introduction to big numbers for children who are starting to be interested in concepts such as 'one thousand' and 'one million'. It emphasises that while one hundred and one thousand are big, one million is much bigger than those. It also links nicely to place value, and the pictures show that going from 10 to 100 to 1000 represents a big step up in size, even though these numbers don't look like they're getting much bigger when we write them as numerals.