Five Little Monkeys By Eileen Christelow

Five Little Monkeys By Eileen Christelow: What It Is and How to Use It

Five Little Monkeys By Eileen Christelow is a picture book adaptation of the classic nursery rhyme. Eileen Christelow, who has been illustrating and writing children's books for decades, retells the story of five monkeys jumping on the bed and falling off one by one. The book is aimed at preschool and early elementary readers. It covers counting down from five and introduces basic subtraction through repetition. The book was published by Holiday House in 1989 and is still in print today. You can find the book in most public libraries, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, or Scholastic. There is also a Kindle edition available. Some libraries offer an ebook or audiobook version through apps like Libby or OverDrive. I should note that the ebook version can be tricky to find through official channels because the rights have shifted over the years. If you are trying to get the digital version and running into trouble, your best bet is to go through your local library's Libby account or just order the physical copy. I tried looking for a direct ebook download through a third-party site once and ended up with a corrupted PDF that was missing half the pages. Stick to legitimate sources. The physical book runs about 32 pages. The illustrations are bright watercolor and pen work. Each monkey that falls off gets a little medical attention from Mother Monkey before the next one jumps. The rhyme structure stays consistent throughout. That consistency is actually what makes it useful for teaching counting backwards.

How to Use This Book in a Classroom or Home Setting

The most straightforward use is reading it aloud to children aged three to six. Read it once for the story. Then read it again and have the kids count the monkeys on each page. By the third reading, most kids can predict which monkey is going to fall off next. That prediction step is where the learning actually happens. You are reinforcing number sequence and the concept of one less. I ran into a specific problem once while using this book with a group of four-year-olds. The kids were so caught up in the falling action that they skipped right past counting. They wanted to hear "and the doctor said no more monkeys jumping on the bed!" every time without engaging with the numbers. What I did was put five small monkey counters on the table before reading. Every time a monkey fell off, a child physically moved one counter aside. That simple change kept them focused on the quantity rather than just the rhyme. It took maybe thirty seconds to set up and made the session actually productive instead of just noisy. Another approach is to use the book as a springboard for a subtraction activity. After reading, give kids five objects like blocks or stickers and have them take one away each time a monkey falls. Write the equation on a whiteboard: 5 minus 1 equals 4. This works best once the kids are already familiar with the story. If you introduce the math too early, they will just be trying to memorize the rhyme instead of understanding the operation.

The book also works for kids who are learning English as a second language. The repetition is slow enough that they can pick up vocabulary like jumping, bed, doctor, and bandage without feeling rushed. I have seen this work well in bilingual classrooms where the teacher reads the book in English first and then repeats key lines in the home language of the students.

Things the Book Does Not Do Well

For all its usefulness, this book has real limitations. It is not a comprehensive math resource. It covers one specific counting sequence and does not vary the numbers or introduce addition. If you need a kid to learn beyond counting down from five, you will need to supplement it with other materials. The book also does not address safety in a nuanced way. Some educators have noted that the repeated image of jumping on the bed could be read as encouraging unsafe behavior, even though the story clearly shows negative consequences. If you are working with parents who are sensitive about that, be prepared to talk about it. The rhythm of the text can also be a double-edged sword. Kids learn to recite the book almost by muscle memory. That is great for memorization but bad if the goal is actual comprehension. I have had kids who could recite the entire book backwards but could not tell me how many monkeys were left after two fell off. The workaround is to pause at random points and ask questions like "how many monkeys are on the bed right now?" instead of letting them run through the whole thing without stopping.

Related Books in the Same Series

Eileen Christelow wrote several other books in a similar counting format. Five Little Ducks and Five Little Ducks Going Over the Hill follow the same pattern with different animal characters. If your kids finish this one and want more of the same structure, those are the next books to look at. Ten Little Raindrops goes the other direction and counts up instead of down. It is worth picking up if you want to show kids that counting can go both ways. The book is structured the same way but reverses the arithmetic. That reversal is something most kids do not encounter until later in their math curriculum, so it is a useful early exposure. The book is a solid, no-frills teaching tool. It is not fancy. It does not have interactive flaps or augmented reality. It does exactly what it says it will do and does it well enough that it has stayed in print for over thirty years. Use it for what it is good at and supplement it when you need more.