INCHWORM AND A HALF

Pinczes, who has a knack for turning math into quietly comic entertainment, takes on fractions with her usual deft touch. Here she uses an inchworm as a measuring device. The pleasing little creature, illustrated in linocuts with deep-dyed colors, noodles about the garden measuring zucchini, eggplants, and snow peas (this is as much a vegetable primer as a sally into parts of a whole). But then she hits a snag: “One day the unthinkable happens: / ‘My measurement’s off just a bit. / One, two, nearly three! How could this be? / There’s no way I could possibly fit.’ ” Out of the blue drops a short worm, a half-inch one, who fills the bill. They, too, are ultimately flummoxed in their merry measurements, until a third-inch worm shuffles up. “To equal one loop by the inchworm, / the second worm had to loop twice. / For accuracy, the third worm looped three. / ‘I’m a one-third-inch fraction, how nice!’ ” The math goes down like sweet syrup, fitted out as it is in handsome artwork and dulcet rhyme, with nary a digit anywhere to spark that old math anxiety. (Picture book. 3-7)