This book is okay. It kind of bored me because of the fact it's mostly directed towards children. It’s pretty cheesy on many levels. Despite the fact that it is cheesy and seems not that creative, you do, as you do in every picture book you read, learn a lesson from the overall plot no matter how corny it is along the way. The other numbers learn that they do in fact need our hero, zero, after he leaves them. He leaves them because he finds out if he multiplies himself times the other numbers they will disappear. The whole time before this the other numbers had been making fun of him. He felt bad about turning his “friends” into nothings, so he fled. Shortly after he fled, they realized they needed him. This teaches the lesson that you can’t take people for granted because you never know when you may need them for your world to fall into place. Now this book wasn’t so corny until… I got to the part where the numbers were attacked by “roman soldiers” which were roman numerals.
Now zero the hero, despite the fact he had been shunned, still wanted to help his other numbers and live up to his name as the hero. He shows them he can make stuff disappear by multiplying himself with it, and the roman numerals run off. Of course just like real life, everyone wants to be friends with the hero after the fact even if they didn’t believe in him prior. This is just another life lesson that a kid reading this alone wouldn’t exactly get all the way. It would have to be explained. ~~Z.J.
