Pebbles and the Biggest Number - Joey Benun - ★★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Joey Benun
ILLUSTRATOR: Laura Watson
GENRE: Children's Picture Book, Maths.
RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A fun way of learning about large numbers, and finding out which is the largest of them all. Educational plus entertaining.


Pebbles the butterfly likes to count things in his garden, but one day, he realises that the numbers are mostly the same. So he sets out on a journey across the world to find out what the largest number is. Through his adventures, we learn plenty of new facts.

As an adult you might know what the largest number is, but to kids, “large” is quite a vague idea, maybe represented by a vague term such as “gazillion”. (You will need to read the book to know what exactly a gazillion is! 😉) The numbers that Pebbles learns about increase incrementally, multiplying a thousand fold each time, thus going from thousand to million to billion and trillion and even further. (Do you know what’s a thousand times a trillion? 😁)

Because of Pebble’s travels, we also get to see a variety of regions, ranging from deserts to rainforests to snowy mountains. These adventures also provide interesting details about these diverse locales on our planet. In fact, there are plenty of trivia on every page, covering fun facts related not just to numbers but also about science and space and other general knowledge. These elements enhance the reading experience even more.

While the concept of large numbers is mathematical, and hence, possibly scary to little ones, the book makes sure that the mathematical details never overwhelm its little readers. There are certain big words (and big numbers), but they are explained in a way that kids will find relatively easy to comprehend. For the tougher words, there is a helpful glossary at the end.

That said, even the glossary might not make things too easy for early readers, so though the official target age group is 4-8 years, I would push it up a bit and recommend this to kids aged 6-9 years. Younger ones can also read the book but their understanding might be a tad limited.

The illustrations are really cute and colourful. While the proportion of the animals is not true to life for obvious reasons, seeing the range of animals courtesy the varied habitats adds another learning opportunity to the book.

Definitely recommended to all math-loving littlies, and even to those who are math-phobic. Who knows, this book might just help them love maths a little more!

My thanks to author Joey Benun for providing me with a complimentary copy of “Pebbles and the Biggest Number”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

The book is available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

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