In recent years, there is a growing interest in early childhood mathematics education research at an international level (Elia et al., 2023). This interest is attributed to a large extent to the increasing emphasis given on preschool education in many countries (e.g., Kagan & Roth, 2017) and to the findings of various studies which provide evidence for the significant role of young children’s early mathematical competences in their mathematics learning and performance later at school (Watts et al., 2014). Based on the above, the need of high-quality mathematics learning experiences from the beginning of children’s education is stressed.

A major pedagogical tool that is systematically used in early childhood education is picture books. Picture books are books that convey information either through a combination of images - text, or only through a series of images (Kümmerling – Meibauer et al., 2015). Picture books are used to nurture children’s emotional, social, and intellectual development as well as to develop children in content areas such as mathematics (Cooper et al., 2020). Particularly, picture books can provide a meaningful framework for learning mathematics and provide an informal base of experience with mathematical ideas that can be a starting point for more formal levels of understanding (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen et al., 2009). Based on the findings of van den Heuvel-Panhuizen et al.’s study (2016), reading picture books should have an important place in the kindergarten curriculum to support children’s mathematical development.

Picture book reading in preschool can be done as an informal and spontaneous activity in which children are involved during free play and also as an activity that is organized and guided by the teacher (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Elia, 2013). Considering the latter case, picture books can be used in all phases of the learning process, such as introducing new mathematical concepts, assessing children’s prior knowledge, deepening understanding and revising topics (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Elia, 2012). Educators can make use of picture books by asking questions, posing problems to children, offering opportunities to discuss mathematical ideas and by adding relevant activities to provoke further exploration of the mathematics included in picture books.

In previous studies, different types of picture books were used to stimulate children’s mathematical development. With respect to the mathematical content included in the picture books, based on Marston’s (2014) work, a distinction can be made between (a) picture books with explicit mathematical content, which are written with the purpose to teach children mathematics, (b) picture books with embedded mathematical content, which are written primarily to entertain but the mathematics is intentional, and (c) picture books with perceived mathematical content, which tell an appealing story and in which mathematics is unintentional and implicit in the story.

According to the recent review on picture book reading in early years mathematics by Op ‘t Eynde et al. (2023), research studies that investigate the interplay between the picture books characteristics and the quality of picture book reading in early mathematics, based on the children’s and/or readers’ utterances, are rare. The present study could be considered as a step towards this research dimension, as it aims to explore the potential of the use of picture books with different characteristics in prompting children’s mathematical thinking.

Considering that, even if picture books are not written to teach mathematics, they may offer many opportunities for the exploration of mathematical ideas by young children (e.g., Dunphy, 2020), our study addresses the following research question: What are the possibilities offered by the use of picture books with embedded mathematical content and picture books with perceived mathematical content for inducing mathematical thinking in early childhood?

To provide a deeper insight into the possibilities of using different types of picture books to stimulate mathematical thinking in the early years, we conducted a case study in which a 4-year-old girl participated. The girl has attended nursery and then kindergarten since the age of 4 months. She has not received formal instruction in mathematics or reading. Two picture books were used in the study: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” (Carle, 2017) and “How to hide a Lion from Grandma” (Stephens, 2014). These picture books are high quality books, which tell appealing stories and are not written to teach children mathematical concepts or skills. However, the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” (Book 1) includes mathematical content that is intentional, while in the book “How to hide a Lion from Grandma” (Book 2) the mathematics is unintentional and incidental. Therefore, based on Marston’s (2014) proposed distinction, in Book 1 the mathematical content is embedded, while in Book 2 the mathematics is perceived. The story of Book 1 is about a small caterpillar that comes out of its egg very hungry. So, every day of the week, she eats a different amount of fruit or sweets, starting with one fruit on Monday, two fruits on Tuesday, etc., until it is full and makes her cocoon where she falls asleep. After two weeks it comes out, and from a small caterpillar, it turns into a beautiful butterfly. The story of Book 2 is about a little girl named Elli, who has a secret: she lives with a lion. Elli has to hide the lion so that her grandmother, who will stay with her on the weekend, does not find it. In the end, however, it seems that Elli’s grandmother is also hiding something she brought from home in her bedroom. For the data collection, the researcher (first author of this paper) read each picture book to the child in a separate session. A book reading scenario was used during each session. The reading scenarios were developed for the two books separately, prior to the reading sessions, and included questions and activities related to the mathematical content of the books, aiming at inducing the child’s mathematical thinking during the picture book reading. Both sessions took place in a quiet place in the school and were recorded. Each session lasted 20-30 minutes. The child’s mathematical thinking was examined by analyzing her utterances and her productions.

The findings of the study show that using the picture books had the power to elicit the child’s mathematical thinking and activate her cognitively. Based on the child’s utterances, the use of both the book with the embedded mathematical content (Book 1, Caterpillar) and the book with the perceived mathematical content (Book 2, Lion) elicited mathematical thinking related to different mathematical concepts. Specifically, although the embedded mathematical content of Book 1 focuses on numbers and counting, its use evoked thinking not only in numbers, but also in measurement and algebra. The use of Book 2 elicited the child’s spatial reasoning and thinking in measurement and numbers. These possibilities for engaging the child in mathematics were offered by the picture books through their rich environment, but also by the discussions and interactions with the reader/researcher and the additional activities that accompanied the narrative. This finding provides evidence for the important role of the reader in evoking the child’s mathematical thinking. For example, in our study more specific questions were asked to the child by the reader to trigger her mathematical thinking in the pages of the picture books in which mathematical content is not explicit. This occurred to a larger extent with Book 2 in which mathematical concepts are incidental and unintentional. Based on our findings, this variation in how the reader used the picture books during reading seemed to be effective, but additional research is needed to provide further insight into this issue. Finally, based on our findings the pictures of both picture books had a crucial role in stimulating the child’s mathematical thinking, since most of the child’s mathematical utterances were focused on the pictures of the books irrespectively of the way the picture books were used (e.g., dialogic reading or accompanying mathematical activities related to the book).

Carle, E. (2017). Μια κάμπια πολύ πεινασμένη [The very hungry caterpillar]. Kalidoskopio. Cooper, S., Rogers, R. M., Purdum-Cassidy, B., & Nesmith, S. M. (2020). Selecting quality picture books for mathematics instruction: What do preservice teachers look for? Children’s Literature in Education, 51(1), 110-124. Dunphy, L. (2020). A picture book pedagogy for early childhood mathematics education. In A. MacDonald, L. Danaia, & S. Murphy (Eds.), STEM Education across the learning continuum (pp. 67-85). Singapore: Springer. Elia, I., Baccaglini-Frank, A., Levenson, E., Matsuo, N., Feza, N., & Lisarelli, G. (2023). Early childhood mathematics education research: Overview of latest developments and looking ahead. Annales de Didactique et de Sciences Cognitives, 28, 75-129. Kagan, S. L., & Roth, J. L. (2017). Transforming early childhood systems for future generations: Obligations and opportunities. International Journal of Early Childhood, 49, 137-154. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., Meibauer, J., Nachatigäller, K., & Rohlfing, J. K. (2015). Understanding learning from picturebooks. In B. Kümmerling-Meibauer, J. Meibauer, K. Nachatigäller, & J. K. Rohlfing (Eds.), Learning from Picturebooks: Perspectives from child development and literacy studies (pp. 1-10). New York: Routledge. Marston, J. (2014). Identifying and Using Picture Books with Quality Mathematical Content: Moving beyond" Counting on Frank" and" The Very Hungry Caterpillar". Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 19(1), 14-23. Op ‘t Eynde, E., Depaepe, F., Verschaffel, L., & Torbeyns, J. (2023). Shared picture book reading in early mathematics: A systematic literature review. Journal für Mathematik-Didaktik, 44(2), 505-531. Stephens, H. (2014). Πώς να κρύψεις ένα λιοντάρι από τη γιαγιά [How to hide a lion from grandma]. Athens: Ikaros. Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., & Elia, I. (2012). Developing a framework for the evaluation of picturebooks that support kindergartners’ learning of mathematics. Research in Mathematics Education, 14(1), 17-47. Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., & Elia, I. (2013). The role of picture books in young children’s mathematical learning. In L. English & J. Mulligan (Eds.), Advances in Mathematics Education: Reconceptualizing Early Mathematics Learning (pp. 227-252). New York: Springer. Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., Elia, I., & Robitzsch, A. (2016). Effects of reading picture books on kindergartners’ mathematics performance. Educational Psychology, 36(2), 323-346. Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., van den Boogaard, S., & Doig, B. (2009). Picture books stimulate the learning of mathematics. Australian Journal of Early childhood, 34(3), 30-39. Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., Siegler, R. S., & Davis-Kean, P. E. (2014). What’s past is prologue: Relations between early mathematics knowledge and high school achievement. Educational Researcher, 43(7), 352-360.