An introduction to fractions made fun and tangible for little mathematicians.
Widjaja’s picture book teaches fractions through visual learning.
“WHO HAS MORE CAKE?” asks the narrator on the first page, beneath a cartoon illustration of a whole scrumptious layer cake dripping with chocolate beside a quarter slice of the same cake. The cakes are decorated with candles in the shape of fractions: “1” and “1/4.” A little girl dressed for a birthday party, with brown pigtails, dark-colored eyes, and rosy pale skin, holds up a finger dipped in chocolate frosting. On the following page, a little boy (with coloring similar to the girl) points at his portion, one-half of a cake, while a robot carries away its own one-quarter slice, answering the question posed above: “WHO GETS MORE CAKE?” Each page has an exercise, a question, or a challenge for the reader to complete (the answers appear in the second half of the book). The fractions become gradually more complicated, but there is a lot of repetition and reframing of the same questions in different contexts. Hompoth-Voicu’s bold and color-saturated cartoon illustrations are vital to the visual learning aspect of the book, yet the illustrations still manage to add a sense of whimsy by playing with light from the candle flames. The examples progress from cake to glasses of juice, while a little grey elephant, a mouse, a tuxedo cat, a brown bear, and a red dinosaur also join the party.
An introduction to fractions made fun and tangible for little mathematicians.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9798989961306
Page Count: 50
Publisher: Silicon Valley Learning Center
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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