I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been able to publish this fresh, number-based picture book, one that has never been seen before.
While there have been books that progress upward while reading, none have been designed to capture the feeling of climbing to the 100th floor as much as this one.
Moreover, the house scenery that unfolds as you go up each floor is so detailed, and the expressions and actions of the anthropomorphic animals are so humorous that children read the book several times and look at it again and again, creating stories.

Any good picture book is one that hides a source of stories, one that gives rise to new stories no matter how many times you look at it.
While the whole thing has one big plot, each of the ten floors has a different mouse, squirrel, frog, ladybug, snake, bee, and woodpecker.
Because it contains stories about bats, snails, and spiders.
I was very curious about who wrote this book and what process they went through to create such a unique and imaginative picture book.
Perhaps the readers of this book will feel the same way.
As it happened, the Japanese publisher that published this book had a detailed account of the author's story behind the book on their website.

Since the author's voice is so vividly expressed in this text, I believe it will be helpful in understanding and enjoying this book, so I will introduce it in summary form.

… About two years ago, my daughter started learning math in first grade, but she had a hard time getting a feel for numbers, so I thought, what if I borrowed the structure of the book and made it into an easy-to-understand picture book?
There are 10 layers of something drawn on them, so there are 10 of them, making a total of 100.
And then on top of that, I started thinking that it would be better if things were piled up one by one to form a larger number rather than just lining up, and that's when I came up with the idea of ​​using a 100-story building.
So, first, I drew a simple picture of a house with about 20 floors.
Then, my daughter said with great joy, “Dad, tell me a story with this!”

While talking and playing with my daughter, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to read the book upwards to express the setting and height of the main character's climb to the 100th floor.
I thought that if it worked out well, it would be a new type of book that we had never seen before.
It was good up to that point, but when it came to the actual work, it was by no means easy to create a specific story and create a variety of rooms for 100 floors, so it took a lot of time.
Along the way, I thought that I could just think of the places I wanted to go and the rooms I wanted to live in, and from then on, things went smoothly and I was able to enjoy drawing.
I hope that this book will go beyond a simple picture book that only teaches numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and become a new type of number picture book where children can naturally learn the concept of numbers while enjoying the colorful illustrations and story.
So, now, let's become the main character, Dochi, and climb to the top of the 100th floor with our hearts pounding, wondering what room and what animals we'll encounter next. - Toshio Iwai

We hope that your child and the whole family will enjoy this book for many years to come.