When paired with adult guidance, a “valuable” look at place value.
Adler tackles yet another difficult math concept using simple language and an excellent comparison.
Just as “A is both a word and a letter,” “1 is both a number and a digit.” Both letters and digits have to be carefully placed in order to express what the writer wants: “cafe” and “face” use the same letters but are most certainly not the same word, and 216 and 621 are different numbers that use the same digits. Using place-value charts throughout (repeated on the front and back endpapers) that highlight in red the individual digits Adler is focusing on, the digital illustrations depict a bunch of smiling monkeys as they follow a recipe to bake a Colossal Banana Cupcake—colossal so as to use the big numbers Adler is describing. On two facing pages, Miller shows towers of eggs—216 white ones and 621 brown ones—divided into hundreds, tens, and ones. Though the hundreds stack of white eggs is 20 tall and the brown one, 25 tall, still readers get the idea that 600 is much greater than 200. When introducing numbers containing decimals, Adler turns to money and gives a good explanation of our number system’s history. Throughout, Adler teaches not only the place value, but also how the numbers should be read—there is no “and” in 6,324, but there is one in 632.4.
When paired with adult guidance, a “valuable” look at place value. (Math picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3550-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Teachers will certainly find themselves wishing for their own arsenal of supplies to help them with their grading, and...
Obviously inspired by "The Little Red Hen," this goes beyond the foundation tale's basic moral about work ethic to explore problem solving, teamwork and doing one’s best.
Nighttime at school brings the Little Red Pen out of the drawer to correct papers, usually aided by other common school supplies. But not this time. Too afraid of being broken, worn out, dull, lost or, worst of all, put in the “Pit of No Return” (aka trash), they hide in the drawer despite the Little Red Pen’s insistence that the world will end if the papers do not get corrected. But even with her drive she cannot do it all herself—her efforts send her to the Pit. It takes the ingenuity and cooperation of every desk supply to accomplish her rescue and to get all the papers graded, thereby saving the world. The authors work in lots of clever wordplay that will appeal to adult readers, as will the spicy character of Chincheta, the Mexican pushpin. Stevens’ delightfully expressive desk supplies were created with paint, ink and plenty of real school supplies. Without a doubt, she has captured their true personalities: the buck-toothed stapler, bespectacled scissors and rather empty-headed eraser.
Teachers will certainly find themselves wishing for their own arsenal of supplies to help them with their grading, and students may take a second glance at that innocuous-looking red pen on the teacher’s desk. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-15-206432-7
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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