Roman Numerals I to MM: Numerabilia Romana Uno ad Duo Mila

by Arthur Geisert

Overview

With a farm of pigs as his abacus, Arthur Geisert uses elements of a search and count game to bring Roman numerals to life in this unintimidating math-concept book. First, the seven Roman numerals are equated with the correct number of piglets. Then the reader may practice counting other items—hot-air balloons, gopher holes, and more—as the remarkable adventure unfolds. (And yes, there are one thousand pigs in the etching for M!)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547562520
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/01/1996
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Lexile:	650L (what's this?)
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Arthur Geisert's unique and exquisite etchings have been widely praised and exhibited at the Chicago Institute of Art, among other museums. His work is regularly selected for the Society of Illustrators', annual Original Art exhibition, and his illustrations are now being collected by the Dubuque Museum of Art. He lives in a converted bank in Bernard, Iowa.

Editorial Reviews

This introduction to roman numerals challenges children to learn a new (well, actually an "old") system of writing and reading numbers. Like the best foreign-language teachers, Geisert avoids translation and encourages his readers to figure out the meaning of the roman numerals. He teaches the concept through the concrete use of pictures of piglets at play, beginning with slender, vertical panels illustrating I, V, X pigs, up to double-page spreads crowded with D and even M pigs. The later pages challenge readers to decipher roman numerals that have been combined to create useful numbers, either by using the Roman system or by counting objects in the pictures: XXVIII fence posts, VII clouds, or VL pigs. Geisert's etchings, tinted with washes, make lively and beautifully detailed illustrations for this unusual book.

Carolyn Phelan

Geisert (Haystack, 1995, etc.) draws upon legions of diminutive pigs to demonstrate the meanings and construction of roman numerals; tubby porculi trot and tussle—in swarms for the larger numbers—about farmyards, a playground, parkland, and a rather scanty junkyard. His distinctive color etchings have a muted cast, but every figure is sharply defined; readers can count the hundreds of piggies on the D and M spreads—plus other objects elsewhere, from water tanks to birds—for themselves. Each scene is captioned with either a numeral, an explanation, or a list. Boggling even the most careful eye (resulting in a typo in the case of "XXII Big balloons," when no more than XII are shown), this curiosity may bemuse more than it educates, but it does give graphic expression to some huge numbers, and so may find a use beyond the alphanumeric byway it explores.

Kirkus Reviews

"As always, Geisert's detailed etchings reward extended perusal, and children will revel in the sheer abundance of pigs. A great lesson in Roman numerals, this book scores a certain X." Publishers Weekly, Starred

From the Publisher