Math

Inside a mysterious jar there is some water. Turn the page and the water becomes the sea. In that sea, there is an island and on that island there are two countries, and so on until the reader has counted to over three million. Mitsumasa Anno’s books use detailed watercolors to show mathematical concepts. Text and pictures combined give a memorable lesson on factorials.

Serious silliness for all ages. Artist Sandra Boynton is back and better than ever with completely redrawn versions of her multi-million selling board books. These whimsical and hilarious books, featuring nontraditional texts and her famous animal characters, have been printed on thick board pages, and are sure to educate and entertain children of all ages.

Ma has made a dozen delicious cookies. It should be plenty for her two children. But then the doorbell rings–and rings and rings. Each ring of the doorbell brings more friends to share the delicious cookies Ma has made.

A is for Abacus. L is for Light-year. And W is for “When are we ever gonna use this stuff, anyway?” This oversized reference book offers a different mathematical word or idea for each letter of the alphabet. Every letter is accompanied by several paragraphs of fascinating discussion and fun, watercolor drawings. This book entertains as it teaches, and it will appeal to math mavens and math phobics alike!

“How many seeds are in a pumpkin?” Mr. Tiffin asks his class as they gather around the big, medium, and small pumpkins on his desk. Robert, the biggest kid, guesses that the largest one has a million seeds; Elinor, sounding like she knows what she’s talking about, guesses the medium one has 500 seeds; and Anna, who likes even numbers better than odd ones, guesses that the little one has 22. Charlie, the smallest boy in the class, doesn’t have a guess. Counting pumpkin seeds is messy business, but once the slimy job is done, to everyone’s surprise, the smallest pumpkin has the most seeds! As Charlie happily exclaims, “Small things have a lot going on inside of them.”

Sarah Flannery is an Irish teenager who won the Irish and European Young Scientist of the Year awards. In friendly, conversational prose, she tells how she moved from simple math puzzles played during dinnertime discussions to number theory, the work of Eratosthenes, cryptography, and discoveries of her own. Her mathematician father co-wrote In Code and it was through his puzzle-solving approach that Sarah found herself challenged to continue an adventure in math.

This playful anthology of poems introduces math language and concepts. Poets Janet Wong, Karla Kuskin, David McCord, and others take a look at how math affects our daily lives. Topics from counting and measuring to percentages and fractions are covered. Bright, color illustrations and a healthy scoop of humor add to this math experience.

The math curse begins on a Monday when a little girl’s math teacher tells the class that you can think of almost everything as a math problem. And sure enough, from Tuesday morning through the rest of the day almost every event in this girl’s life constitutes a math problem — some real, others wacky! Tuesday night she dreams she is trapped in a room with no doors and windows and must solve math problems for a lifetime. But she frees herself by putting a hole in the wall and jumping out, only to be told the next day by her science teacher that “you can think of almost everything as a science experiment!”