Mind-Boggling Numbers

by Michael J. Rosen, Julia Patton (Illustrator)

Overview

If you could hike to the moon, how long would it take? Just how many glasses of lemonade would you need to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool? If everyone on Earth owned exactly the same amount of land, how big would your yard be? And how much time would you spend mowing the lawn?

Learn the math behind these questions in this hilarious romp through weight, volume, distance, and more. These 12 zany scenarios add up to a book full of fun!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512420524
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	72 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 9 Years

About the Author

Michael J. Rosen is the acclaimed author of some three dozen books for children of all ages (and even more for grown-ups!), including The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Poems for Birders; Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Famiy’s Farm (which he both wrote and illustrated with some 400 photographs); A Drive in the Country; Don’t Shoot!; A School for Pompey Walker; and Elijah’s Angel. For over 35 years, ever since working as a counselor, water-safety instructor, and art teacher at local community centers, Michael has been engaged with young children, their parents, and teachers. As a visiting author, in-service speaker, and workshop leader, he frequently travels to schools and conferences around the nation, sharing his stories, poems, creativity, and humor.

As a talented editor and illustrator, Michael has enlisted hundreds of other authors and artists to create 15 philanthropic books that aid in the fight to end childhood hunger through Share Our Strength’s national efforts, or that offer care to less fortunate companion animals through The Company of Animals Fund, a granting program he began in 1990.

For the last four years, working with the Ohio Children’s Foundation, Michael created a early literacy activity book, particularly designed for kids who are likely to start school without knowing the alphabet: You, Me, and the ABCs: 100 Ready-for-Reading Activities for Kids and Their Favorite Grown-ups.
Julia Patton is an award-winning author and illustrator who works from a rustic woodshed in the wilds of rural Northumberland, UK. Her work includes The Very Very Very Long Dog and Snail Mail.

Editorial Reviews

"Amusing . . . this book may work best in the hands of enthusiastic parents, educators, or XKCD fans who wish to inculcate a love of numbers in the next generation."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

2016-07-02
It is not so much that the numbers boggle as that they simply fly by.Great-sized numbers are undeniably awesome—like the digits in pi—but they are also undeniably abstract. Yes, it is fun to grind the brain cogs for a bit, but the game soon cools. Rosen does try very hard here to keep it real: all kid characters are 4 feet tall and weigh 60 pounds to make for a standard unit of measurement, and he puts them in settings that at least some readers can relate to: mowing the yard, writing a birthday card, in a swimming pool. How many school days and glasses of lemonade to fill the pool (Olympic-sized pool; 660,000 gallons; 8-ounce glasses; premixed lemonade; 600 kids helping = 98 glasses poured in by all students for 179 school days, for a total of 10.5 million glasses of lemonades)? Each question is posed in a letter to Ms. Mary Math and then answered in a breezy, exclamation-mark–laden narrative piece (with longer explanations in the back of the book, along with metric conversions and concept definitions), while the entertaining Patton works the mixed-media pedals, featuring a multiracial mix of children in fanciful scenarios. Still, it all feels a bit forced, and the dizzying number of numbers in Ms. Mary Math’s responses can make the eyes cross. How many readers who make it through would go back for a second go-round? Hmm. (Informational picture book. 7-11)

Kirkus Reviews