Tang would like to take the memorization out of the multiplication tables and insert some understanding. Play with the numbers, he suggests, get to know them and their relationships; use a little common sense. Here, critters of all stripes break the tables down into more digestible bits. Set in splashy, saturated color, zippy little quatrains introduce each table and explain his approach: “Two is very fast and fun, / quickly double and you’re done. / What’s that you say, be more precise? / Okay then, just add it twice.” When the tack taken is straightforward and simple enough, it reveals the workings of multiplication, as when the fours tables are understood as doubled twice, or the fives tables as half of the tens. Sometimes, though, things can get a little unwieldy: “Seven doesn’t take much time, / even though it is a prime. / Here is all you have to do, / first times 5 then add times 2.” That’s a lot to keep in your head, and memorization may seem less trouble. But Tang’s hope is that through these math autopsies, readers will grasp the mechanics at work and bury their math anxieties. (author’s note) (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-439-21044-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Trickling, bubbling, swirling, rushing, a river flows down from its mountain beginnings, past peaceful country and bustling city on its way to the sea. Hooper (The Drop in My Drink, 1998, etc.) artfully evokes the water’s changing character as it transforms from “milky-cold / rattling-bold” to a wide, slow “sliding past mudflats / looping through marshes” to the end of its journey. Willey, best known for illustrating Geraldine McCaughrean’s spectacular folk-tale collections, contributes finely detailed scenes crafted in shimmering, intricate blues and greens, capturing mountain’s chill, the bucolic serenity of passing pastures, and a sense of mystery in the water’s shadowy depths. Though Hooper refers to “the cans and cartons / and bits of old wood” being swept along, there’s no direct conservation agenda here (for that, see Debby Atwell’s River, 1999), just appreciation for the river’s beauty and being. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0792-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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