A sequel to City Alphabets (a Q&Q book of the year in 2009), City Numbers again finds Torontonians Joanne Schwartz and Matt Beam exploring the variety of signs and messages to be found and enjoyed in an urban environment.

As in the previous book, each spread features a large photograph, this time of a number found somewhere in the city. Beam captures both the formal and the casually inscribed: numbers are discovered on electrical boxes, traffic lights, skyscraper entrances, and bags of garden rocks. The interaction between the colour and texture of the number and the background give the book its visual drama and interest. While neither humour nor conventional beauty is particularly prevelant, the images could be used as an entree to various forms of contemporary art, from elegant minimalism to pop art and collage.

This is a sophisticated book, as befits author Schwartz, a Toronto children’s librarian with a particular interest in illustration. Departing from conventional counting books, the numbers here vary from the usual single digits to include “Second” and “Three point two five percent.” The book begins with “Zero” (accompanied by a photograph of three zeros) and ends with a bar code. For each entry, the text includes a small-print notation on the medium used, and where the number was found (e.g., “Stencil painted on steel. Hydroelectric pole”).

Beam’s photographs are richly textured though seldom brightly coloured, and some numbers are easier to read than others, though that plays into the book’s sense of discovery. The photo of the number five, painted on asphalt in a playground, reveals lovely colours and patterns in a simple chunk of ground we may have passed hundreds of times and never noticed.