The Greedy Triangle--The author of The I Hate Mathematics Book celebrates geometric shapes in this informative but visually cluttered addition to the Marilyn Burns Brainy Day series. Her main character, a triangle with gleaming black eyes and a perky grin, leads a full life-it can take the shape of a slice of pie or rest in an elbow's angle "when people put their hands on hips." Yet the triangle aspires to greater complexity, so it asks a "shapeshifter" to turn it into a quadrilateral (the shape of a TV or a book's page), then into a pentagon (a house's facade) and so forth. Burns fails to show that the triangle is "greedy"; it's just adventurous. But her story successfully introduces basic polygons, and her afterword to adults suggests ways of teaching children some of the finer points about geometry (e.g., the concept of a plane or rhomboids). For his picture book debut, Silveria chooses tart shades of yellow, orange, lavender and green. His airbrushed colored-pencil compositions have suitably angular details; speckled paint and multicolored doodles soften the effect but create a sense of disorder. If the art as a whole is somewhat jumbled, readers still come away from this volume noticing and naming the shapes of the objects around them.
Amanda
Bean's Amazing Dream --The advantages of multiplication are introduced
in a simple story about an African-American girl who loves to count things,
both in and out of school, but is unsure how multiplication will speed up the
process. After counting the tiles on the kitchen counter and the books on the
library shelves, she falls asleep and begins to dream of a calm bike ride in
the country. Then, eight sheep on bicycles come zooming by and stop at a barn
to get five yarn balls apiece to give to seven grandmothers knitting sweaters.
Amanda is overwhelmed by trying to tot up bicycle wheels, sheep legs, knitting
needles, and sweater arms-until the sheep and the grandmothers begin shouting,
"Multiply!" She awakes, convinced that she wants to learn how. Large,
lively, ink-and-watercolor cartoons in cheerful colors are filled with objects
to count, from lollipops to windowpanes. A comprehensive guide for adults on
the usage of the principles and pictures in the book is included.
A
Cloak For The Dreamer--While teaching a little elementary geometry,
this title in the Marilyn Burns Brainy Day series also offers a lesson about
fitting square pegs in round holes. Ivan and Alex want to be tailors like their
father, but youngest brother Misha dreams of travel.
When each son must fashion a cloak for the archduke, Ivan sews one using
rectangles of fabric. Alex makes a cloak of squares and an extra cloak of
triangles. But Misha's disastrous cloak of circles
demonstrates the geometrical concept that shapes must have angles to fit
together. Seeing that Misha's heart lies elsewhere, the tailor frees his son to travel the
world. As a farewell gift, the tailor presents Misha
with the fateful cloak, whose circles he has snipped into snug-fitting hexagons
and then restitched. Friedman's story provides an
agreeable front for the lesson, and capable watercolors lend a pleasing
old-world ambiance. Three pages of clearly written instruction and teaching
tips follow the story.
Spaghetti
And Meatballs For All--Mr. and Mrs. Comfort decide to have a family
dinner and invite their children, parents, in-laws, and neighbors. To seat the
32 guests, eight square tables and the appropriate number of chairs are rented
and arranged according to a plan devised by Mrs. Comfort. However, as the
guests arrive, they rearrange the furniture so they can sit together, resulting
in mayhem until Mrs. Comfort's original configuration once again evolves.
Subtitled "A Mathematical Story," the focus of this picture book is
math concepts, not story. A note for adults suggests exercises in shapes and
perimeter. Somewhat humorous, sketchy cartoons are busy and cluttered as guests
of various ages and ethnicity rearrange furnishings, table settings, and food.
The
King's Commissioners--An addle-pated king has
lost track of his various commissioners, what with separate functionaries in
charge of Spilt Milk, Mismatched Socks, Wrong Turns, etc. So he and the Royal
Advisors plan to convene the commissioners and count them. But the First Royal
Advisor counts in groups of twos, the Second Royal Advisor counts by fives and
the capable little Princess counts by tens, leaving the King more confused than
ever. A long afterword to parents and teachers
explains that the book aims "to stimulate children to think about the
place value structure of our number system." While the text certainly
functions as an animated introduction to mathematics and the illustrations
almost burst with comic moments, the story itself is a limp one.