Math + Art > numbers

Here’s something you need to know about Sally (the inspiration for this blog): she was married to a math teacher and her three sons grew up to become math teachers. So I figure it’s only appropriate to include math stories every now and then. Here’s one that will hit the shelves in about 10 days (estimation is a useful math skill!).

Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers 

by Rajani LaRocca; illus. by Chaaya Prabhat 

32 pages; ages 3-6

Charlesbridge, 2021

theme: math, art, holidays

Bina had three big brothers: Vijay, Siddharth, and Arjun.

Like big brothers everywhere, they sometimes annoyed her – but Bina loves them anyway. So when the Hindu festival, Raksha Bandhan grows close, she decides to make her brothers some bracelets. They will be the perfect gift to celebrate the close relationship that ties them together as siblings. So Bina decides to buy beads to make the bracelets. Vijay loves blue but hates the color green. Siddharth loves green but can’t stand orange. And Arjun loves orange but is oh-so-tired of blue. 

What I like about this book: This story integrates math by using colors and patterns. With only enough money to buy the beads her brothers love, Bina has to figure out how to make bracelets that are fun and include more than one color. Rajani also includes Back Matter (yay!) with information about the festival and a math exploration activity.

I caught up with Rajani a couple weeks ago and asked her One Question:

me: What made you so passionate about math - and so passionate about sharing

it with young people through your books?

Rajani: I love that math truly is everywhere, that we use it all the time to solve everything from simple, everyday problems to incredibly complex ones. There is a beauty to math that fills me with wonder. I love writing books that, I hope, inspire young people to think about math with a sense of discovery and fun.

Beyond the Books:

Make some patterns using two colors of beads or blocks – or even splats of paint. Like Bina, you might do alternating colors (green-blue-green-blue). What other kinds of repeating patterns can you make using only two colors? Here’s one to get you started: green-blue-blue-green-blue-blue…

Instead of colors, what other ways can you create patterns? Use different senses. Create some patterns you can see (shape? French fries vertical or horizontal?). Create patterns you can hear (drum beats? notes?). Create patterns of texture (sandpaper-smooth? different textures of cloth?)

Rajani is a member of #STEAMTeam2021. In addition to practicing medicine, she writes award-winning fiction and nonfiction books for children. Some of her titles this year include: Red, White, and Whole, Much Ado About Baseball, and Where Three Oceans Meet – plus more on the way! Find out more about her and her books at her website, www.rajanilarocca.com

We’ll be joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding & Author Interview

Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding 
by Linda Liukas
112 pages; ages 4-8
Feiwel & Friends, 2015

Imagine a picture book with chapters, combined with an activity book, all with the focus of inspiring young children to play around with tools of computer programming. At the core of this book is the philosophy that play is integral to learning, and that coding is a way to express yourself through play - like crayons or LEGO blocks.

This is no coding guide. Instead, Hello Ruby introduces fundamentals of the kind of thinking that kid coders need: how to break big problems into small problems; how to look for patterns; and how to write step-by-step directions (useful not only in sharing recipes but also in telling a computer what to do).

Ruby, the character in this book, is a small girl with a huge imagination and lots of cool friends. She builds things using her imagination, and that sometimes means making maps, gathering information, and testing out different solutions to problems.

The second half of the book is a collection of activities designed for parents and children to explore together. This is where the actual “coding” comes in. For example, how would you instruct Ruby in making her bed? You see, coding is how you tell a computer what things to do, and what order to do them in. This back section is where you play with logic, meet Booleans, and decode a secret language. Perfect for cold winter afternoons! 

Nothing helps you learn about coding faster than trying it yourself. Head on over to Ruby's website to play some games... some of them require nothing more than a pencil and your imagination. And when you've finished there, check out the resources over at Archimedes Notebook. 

I wanted to know more about how Hello Ruby came about. Author Linda Liukas graciously answered Three Questions. 

Sally: How did you get started in computer programming? And what did you love about it that made you want to do it? 

Linda: I was 13 and madly in love with Al Gore, the then vice-president of US. I had all this teenage girl passion and energy and wanted to make a website for him in Finnish. At the time there was no Tumblr or Facebook, so the only way for me to express all my feelings was by learning HTML and CSS. This has probably influenced my later programming career: for me, coding has always been about creativity, expression and practical application. 

Our kids should learn to bend, join, break and combine code in a way it wasn't designed to - just as they would with crayons and paper or wood and tools. I want to show how coding can be as creative a tool as music or drawing or words. You create something out of nothing, with pure words and thought structures. Learning programming teaches you to look at the world in a different way. 

Sally: Why did you want to write "Hello Ruby" as a picture book? 

Linda: Such a huge part of our daily lives is spent in front of a screen. I believe there's a lot of value in parents and children exploring and interacting offline. That's why Hello Ruby is aimed for 5-7 year olds to be read together at bedtime with the parent, kids who don't necessarily read or write yet on their own. And there's a wealth of knowledge about computers and computing concepts we can teach to the little ones before even opening the terminal. 

Sally: Are there some games parents can play with really young kids before they get on computers? I'm thinking things like putting blocks into patterns (color & shape), but can you think of others? 

Linda: I think computing principles are everywhere around us, and the book familiarizes kids with fundamentals of programming, computational thinking and the attitudes that are important for any future programmer. These include things like the ability to decompose a problem, spot patterns, think algorithmically, debug problems and work together. My hypothesis is that when a kid learns to spot computational thinking in everyday situations, they’ll also be able to learn abstract programming languages more easily. 

Today we're joining the roundup over at the Nonfiction Monday blog where you'll find even more book reviews. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Tortoise and Hare's Amazing Race

Tortoise and Hare's Amazing Race
by Marianne Berkes; illus. by Cathy Morrison
32 pages; ages 4-8
Arbordale books, 2015

Henry Hare was always bragging. "I can run faster than anybody..." and he wonders how Tortoise can ever get anywhere because she moves so slowly.

Tortoise says she plans ahead and stays on track, but Henry challenges her to a race. The finish line: the top of the hill, 1760 yards away - a mile.

Starting at 6 am the race is on. From there on, the race is measured in fractions of total distance, and also in feet. So the language of math becomes part of the tale. I don't need to tell you the ending because you already know it: slow and steady wins the race.

At the back are four pages of activities for creative minds: things to measure, using different measurement tools, an introduction to "greater than" and "less than" and a letter scramble puzzle.

Review copy from the publisher.

Geometry takes flight with the Wing Wing Brothers

The Wing Wing Brothers Geometry Palooza!
by Ethan Long
32 pages; ages 4-7
Holiday House, 2014

themes: math, humor

"Walter wheels out the Whammer. Here comes Wendell! Watch him whiz through the air!"

The Wing Wing Brothers are a family circus act of five wacky birds: Walter, Wendell, Willy, Wilmer, and Woody. They do their best to make math painless and fun. Using magic wands and feats of daring they whip those polygons into shape.

Their first amazing feat - Describing Relative Positions - opens with a blast, boom, splat! Their goal: Launch a human bird cannonball through a hoop of fire. Then, with a waggle of the wand - poof! Triangles! Squares! Rectangles! and more to amaze you! Of course there's the "sawing a person in the box" act... which turns out just the way you'd expect and requires special glue...

What I like about this book: it's silly and a fun way to play with math - as long as kids don't try these stunts at home! The alliterative language is fun, too.

Beyond the book: The first thing I wanted to do after reading this book was see how many different shapes I could make using just triangles and squares. Easy to do - just cut a couple or three index cards into right triangles and a square and put them together.

Tangrams! A tangram is a puzzle of seven shapes that are put together to form specific shapes, such as a rabbit or a boat. The tans (pieces) are: two large right triangles, two small right triangles, one medium right triangle, a square and a parallelogram. If you don't have a tangram puzzle, you can make one - directions here (you might want to trace the pieces onto a cereal box so they last longer). Or you can play with the puzzle online here.

Go on a field trip to find shapes. The best place to hunt for triangles (and other straight-edged shapes) is around town: bridges, buildings, playgrounds.

Today is STEM Friday - head over to the STEM Friday blog to see what other people are talking about in science. Review copy provided by publisher.

Too Many Penguins!

365 Penguins
by Jean-Luc Fromental; illus by Joelle Jolivet
48 pages; ages 1-8
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2006

Once again, a weather-inspired story. I know we're half-way to spring, but there's still plenty of ice and snow and windy cold in the days ahead... weather to make us feel like penguins.

This is a math book disguised as a silly story. On New Year's Day, a delivery man delivers a package. Inside: one penguin. There's no return address, no letter explaining who sent the package - only a note saying: "I'm number 1. Feed me when I'm hungry." Puzzling, but having a penguin in the house might be entertaining.

The next day the delivery man returns - with another package. Inside, another penguin. Day three, another penguin. By the end of January there were thirty-one penguins in the house. By the end of February the family is arguing about the best way to organize the penguins. Eventually the mystery is solved when Uncle Victor shows up and takes the penguins. Life returns to normal for a few hours until - ding-dong! The delivery man comes to the door with a large box.

This is an oversized book which, fully opened, is almost as tall as a small penguin. It's full of math problems (how quickly can you go broke buying fish for penguins) and raises questions about population. Mostly, it's just plain fun.

Review copy provided by library.

Castaway Cats

Castaway Cats

By Lisa Wheeler; illustrated by Ponder Goembel
32 pages, ages 4 and up

Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, 2006

“On an island / in the ocean / near the land of Singapore,

midst a storm of great proportion,

fifteen cats were washed ashore.”

So begins Lisa Wheeler’s saga of shipwrecked cats – cats that, now stranded, must learn to sink or swim. Together. And that turns out to be as hard as … herding cats.

The rhymes are engaging and, if you’re up to singing, can accompany the tune “Oh My Darlin’ Clementine”. Every now and then Wheeler breaks the rhyme with a couplet that, not only furthers the story, but presents a mathematical relationship. For example:

  

“Fifteen cats by tempest blown –

Seven babes and eight full grown.”

The cats do not get along. They have … cat fights. But eventually they find a way to work together and, when escape becomes possible, decide to remain together, living on the island.

This is a fun book to read. In addition to math facts, there are delicious puns scattered through the pages.  Review copy from my bookshelf.

The Rabbit Problem

The Rabbit Problem

By Emily Gravett (and a lot of rabbits)

32 pages, ages 4 and up

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2010

If you put one pair of baby rabbits into a field, how many rabbits will there be at the end of a month? At the end of one year? Emily Gravett considers this question, posed by Fibonacci back in the 13th-century, in a book that reads like a calendar – complete with errands scribbled in the day’s boxes, sticky notes and a booklet on things to do with carrots.

As for the math, as with any problem there are rules. In this case: no rabbits may leave the field and a few basic assumptions about how fast rabbits produce offspring. There’s also a bunch of unexpected tangents: what do rabbits do in the winter when it’s freezing outside? Are there rabbit parenting guides? What do we do with all these kids all summer? Soon you’ve got chaos.

Gravett has fun illustrating the social life of an ever-increasing rabbit community: they need food; they create a community newspaper (complete with horoscopes); they deal with issues of diet and exercise. And always, she keeps her eye on the population count – leaving you to do the math. When things get too crowded, the rabbits take matters into their own hands and change the rules. You don’t need to understand Fibonacci to enjoy this book – but it helps…

It's Picture Book Month, so share a good book with a kid you love. Review copy provided by the publisher.