Counting in Dog Years and Other Sassy Math Poems

by Betsy Franco, Priscilla Tey (Illustrator)

Overview

Twenty-nine playful poems from the maven of math poetry + ingenious high-concept art = countless hours of mind-blowing, mathematical fun.


Award-winning author Betsy Franco is back with another pitch-perfect performance that explores a range of math topics—from fractions and time measurements to geometry and graphs—in a way that relates math to the daily lives of children. Even the most mathematically disinclined will warm to these innovative poems, illustrated with game-changing wit and whimsy by Priscilla Tey, whose clever mechanical “Numbots” guide readers through a surreal playground of calculated delights. From multiplying mice to missing socks, from stinky scales to bug races, this collection of imaginative verse subtracts the mystery, fear, and loathing from mathematics, making it engrossing and fun for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536246339
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	11/01/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Betsy Franco is the award-winning author of more than eighty books for children, including Messing Around on the Monkey Bars and Other School Poems for Two Voices, Mathematickles!, Zero Is the Leaves on the Trees, Pond Circle, and other titles that explore math and science through poetry. She lives in California.

Priscilla Tey is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and the author-illustrator of In-Between Things and Twitchy Witchy Itch. She lives in Singapore.

“My philosophy, when researching, writing, and editing books, has always been to let adults, young adults, and children speak for themselves as much as possible,” says writer and anthologist Betsy Franco.

Certainly this was the case when Betsy Franco worked with teenagers across the country to collect original poems and free-written prose for four powerful anthologies: Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers; You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys; Things I Have To Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls; and Night Is Gone, Day Is Still Coming: Stories and Poems by American Indian Teens And Young Adults, which was coedited by Annette Piña Ochoa and Traci L. Gourdine. “Teens aren’t afraid to be frank,” Betsy Franco observes. “These books are uncensored, so any reader can hear firsthand, honest accounts on subjects that are important to them.” The sheer honesty of the submissions surprised the anthologist as she started her projects and inspired her as she continued in her mission. “The writers’ openness made me determined to try not to hit a false note in any aspect of the books,” she says.

Betsy Franco first started collecting writing by teenage girls “in response to a teenage friend of mine who was going through some difficult experiences in high school, and in response to the book Reviving Ophelia [about female adolescence],” she says. A similar project aimed at boys was a natural follow-up. “There were so many stereotypes floating around about boys,” she notes. “Since my own sons didn’t fit the stereotypes, I imagined that other boys didn’t, either.”

In fall 2009, Betsy’s first YA novel, Metamorphosis, Junior Year, was published by Candlewick. The main character, Ovid, wryly records his classmates’ dramas as modern-day Roman mythology. Meanwhile Ovid hides his own Olympian struggles and a disturbing secret.

Now the author or compiler of more than eighty books, including poetry, picture books, and nonfiction for children and adults, Betsy Franco has also invented educational toys. The recipient of a BA in studio art from Stanford University and a MA in education from Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Betsy Franco was originally going to be a painter, but switched her creative energy to writing. She lives with her husband in Palo Alto, California, and has three sons, with limitless creativity, who have provided inspiration for many of her most fearless ideas.

Three Things You Might Not Know About Me

1. I write SNL-type comedy sketches and perform them with my comedy troupe,
Suburban Squirrel, which my son James has mentioned twice on Late Show with
Dave Letterman.

2. I’m part of a Bay Area improv group.

3. My sons are James, Tom, and Dave Franco. James and Dave are actor/writers and
Tom is a sculptor/illustrator. Tom is the illustrator of my first young adult novel,
METAMORPHOSIS, and James and Dave read the audio version.

Editorial Reviews

Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics. . . . Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood. . . Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
—Kirkus Reviews

Builds on familiar concepts while exploring new ideas. There are clever usages of meter and stress that pair very nicely with the counting aesthetic throughout. . . . School librarians looking for STEAM titles that pair silliness with educational topics in the style of Douglas ­Florian will love this fun, ­math-themed poetry collection that joins English ­language arts and mathematics as a dynamic duo.
—School Library Journal

Silly humor and punchy payoffs abound in Franco’s (Mathematickles!, rev. 7/03) latest math-themed poetry collection. . . . That dash of cheeky ’tude is spot-on for the audience, and better yet, they’ll never feel like they’re stuck staring at a dull textbook. That’s thanks, in part, to Tey’s whimsical gouache scenes. . . Franco ends with “Math Makes Me Feel Safe,” a warm-hearted finale that counters mathphobia by centering math’s connection to and meaning in daily life.
—The Horn Book

The illustrations' combination of children, animals, and wacky robotic beings in exaggerated and slightly surreal scenes enhance the lighthearted tone. The final poem, “Math Makes Me Feel Safe,” brings young readers back to reality with everyday examples of math and validates the security it brings to many children.
—Booklist

Franco explores the joy of everyday mathematics in 20 rhyming poems. . . Tey’s gouache illustrations portray a riot of whimsy in muted tones, depicting children and adults of varied skin tones amid imaginative scenes, including a child floating alongside a straw and paper umbrella in an iced drink.
—Publishers Weekly

We love 3rd grade books that do double duty. These funny poems will also help kids practice math concepts like multiplication and fractions.
—We Are Teachers

From the Publisher

2022-06-22
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.

Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews