100-story house
A house with 100 floors underground
100-story house by the sea
100-story house in the sky
100-story house in the forest
100-story swamp house

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be publishing this fresh, number-based picture book series, one that has never been seen before.

Moreover, the house scenes that unfold as you pass through each floor are so detailed, and the expressions and actions of the anthropomorphic animals are so humorous that children read them over and over 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.
Because the whole thing has one big plot, and each of the ten floors contains a different animal story.

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.
Finally, the Japanese publisher that published this book has a very vivid description of the reason for writing my first book, so I will briefly summarize it here.

‘… About two years ago, my daughter started learning math as a first grader, 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.


Now then, let's become the main character Dochi and climb to the top of the 100th floor with our hearts pounding to see what room and what animals we will encounter next. - Toshio Iwai

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