AREA

An area is a space (any size, any shape) with edges, or BOUNDARIES: units for measuring it can be STANDARD (pennies, square inches or square centimeters) or nonstandard (your friends lying across your bed to see how many will fit), and you can cut out paper squares to measure the pages of this book, a drawing of your hand, or the surface area of a CUBE or a shoebox; for a curved surface such as a grapefruit ""try using very very small units"" or, better still, taking off the peel and laying it flat. In the series manner it's all presented so as to induce readers -- those who are willing to do all the culling and folding and counting -- to discover for themselves.