ISOBEL ADDS IT UP

When the noise from next door threatens to keep quiet-loving Isobel from completing her math homework on time, she gets serious about resolving her noisy-neighbor situation.

Isobel, who presents as Black, listens to the loud thumps and bumps made by her new and noisy neighbors and imagines that there must be acrobats on the other side of the shared wall. As the noise continues, Isobel thinks that the neighbors must be a marching band or even a basketball team! After a failed attempt to get back at the neighbors by making some noise of her own, Isobel comes up with a new plan. She and her father bake peanut-butter cookies and deliver them with a note asking the new neighbors to be quiet. To her surprise, she receives a note back from her new neighbor, Bernadette—an elephant. Bernadette also has math homework due Monday, and it turns out the two make a winning pair of study partners. Not only is it refreshing to read a story about a little girl who loves math, but it is also exciting to read a book in which a child learns to establish boundaries in a way that is kind and fair. Ford illustrates Isobel’s reality in full color, with skewed angles to emphasize the disruption to her routines; both the equations she’s trying to work and her imagined scenes are represented as monochrome, white-space–filling cartoons.

An adorable story about friendship and learning how to state your needs.