Fibonacci
Title: The Man of Numbers
Author: Keith Devlin, PhD
Publisher: Walker & Company
Genre: Math History
Length: 183 pages
Swirl by Swirl – a child’s picture book – is where it started. We checked it out from the library once, then twice, and finally again and again. It’s about the Fibonacci sequence found in so many spirals in our natural world. We love it. Of course, it has a bit in the back about the Fibonacci sequence and the math involved, and that’s cool too, something to instill in young minds so that the
re is familiarity with the topic before they begin Algebra in their tweens.
Of course, at some point I picked up The Pythagorean Theorem, and there Posamatier mentions Ptolemy and his great work The Algamest as well as Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci. Naturally, I requested these at my local library. “There’s a book about Fibonacci called The Man of Numbers that’s here if you want to read that while you wait for the others to come in,” she told me. Yes, yes, I would like to read that while I wait for the others.
I checked it out.
I ended up starting and finishing it, however, in one sitting while my kiddo made use of the sixty minute literacy computer session I allow her if she’s been good prior to coming to the library that day. It was good. Quick. Informative. And of course, just made me want Liber Abaci even more.
Devlin gives you all the necessary history in the concise nature of a mathematician. He even laments how most mathematicians are concerned about the math and the theorems and not necessarily who originally came up with them or their history, causing much of the history surrounding mathematical ideas to be lost or misconstrued. Who cares? It’s about the numbers.
I care. Historians care. We don’t care as much about the numbers as we do about the theory, the philosophy… we care about math’s heritage more than the practice of being all mathy. At least that’s how I feel. I’ll leave number crunching to my husband and daughter – I’ll just be able to tell them who came up with that particular way to crunch.
With all this caring comes the discovery that Fibonacci’s name wasn’t even Fibonacci. Devlin recounts the fact that the man’s name was Leonardo and he hailed from Pisa. Leonardo Pisano, as the people of that time and culture would say. But he referred to himself as fillies Boracic, “son of Bonacci.” Yet, his father’s name wasn’t Bonacci, so people assumed he meant that he was of the family Bonacci… the Bonacci family evolved and later historian Guillaume Libri coined the name Fibonacci. Hundreds of years later. Leonardo was renamed Fibonacci in 1838.
Fibonacci also referred himself as Leonardo Bigolli… a named once translated would be “Leonardo Blockhead.” Though, Devlin asserts, it’s doubtful that Fibonacci was calling himself a blockhead.
That brings us to our latest picture book selection… Blockhead: the life of Fibonacci. This delightful picture book was written by Joseph D’Agnese and was illustrated by John O’Brien. Even though there’s a lot we don’t know about Fibonacci’s real life or how he came to discover his mathematical findings the way he did – it’s fun to imagine what his life was like and where he might have come up with his self-proclaimed nickname “Bigolli.”
For good measure, we re-read Swirl by Swirl afterward and are looking forward to memorizing a few things in the upcoming months.
The first is from Brahmagupta (quoted in Devlin’s book):
“A debt minus zero is a debt.
A fortune minus zero is a fortune.
Zero minus zero is a zero.
A debt subtracted from zero is a fortune.
A fortune subtracted from zero is a debt.
The product of zero multiplied by a debt or fortune is zero.”
The second are the first ten numbers in the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55.
Springtime Means Seed Time
We are kind of in love with our librarians at this “new” library branch. We loved our librarians at the old house, don’t get me wrong, but these ones have definitely weaseled their way into our hearts. Case and point – there’s this adorable seasonal bin one of the children’s librarians puts together, and of course, we find the *best* things there.
This week, it was Flip, Float, Fly
Of course, when we’re not reading and planting ourselves… we’re out and about playing in creeks and inspecting the forest.
Maple & Willow
Title: Maple & Willow Together
Author/Illustrator: Lori Nichols
I would have gotten this review up earlier in the week except every time I pick it up to look at it the kiddo stops me and says, “Oh Mommy, read it again, it’s so beautiful.”
So we’ve read this on repeat all week and have yet to put a line down about it anywhere.
We love that the girls are named after trees. We love that they spend 90% of the story outside. We love that they are sweet, sweet, but realistic sisters.
The girls play outside making fairy gardens and blowing dandelions – something we do a lot of. Collecting worms is also a household specialty; kiddo once delivered earth worms to my sister’s kitchen table and insisted they have lunch along with her and her cousins. My sister was none too thrilled about this and sent kiddo and the worms back outside where they belonged.
We love how familiar the girls’ lifestyle is, how much these aspects of their lives are in fact the best parts of childhood. We love… well, we simply love everything about them. Kiddo has asked that I buy this one for our collection, as we picked this up at the library. We will do just that as soon as I find it. We’ll purchase the other books in the series as well.
Swirl By Swirl
Title: Swirl By Swirl
Authors: Beth Krommes & Joyce Sidman
Genre: Picture Book / Educational
We actually read this one quite a bit ago, I was hoping to review it when I finally got around to purchasing it, but I can’t wait any longer. It’s too wonderful to keep under wraps any longer and it has been an inspiration to my kiddo who now draws swirls and “round ups” into all her artwork.
The book is all about finding math in nature. About how snails, flowers, and everything have mathematical patterns that create functional things we can see. It first page by page identifies all these things… spider webs, tendrils on foliage, the curls of animals’ tails, etc.
Then, it explains the how and why of it all.
Kiddo’s eye lit up at the end of the book every time (we had to read it over and over again before we turned it back into the library). My four year old’s mind was blown.
I want to have this book on hand when she’s older as well, to revisit and enjoy the beautiful illustrations again and again through out her studies. It’s so lovely.
Teaching Life and Liberty
Title: Thomas Jefferson
Author/Illustrator: Maira Kalman
Publisher: Penguin
If you want to teach about the founders of America via biographical picture books, Maira Kalman is a great place to start. With spunky pictures and fonts, Kalman introduces children to Jefferson (and in another book she tackles Lincoln), his love for books, language, and gardening.
Kids can discover in Thomas Jefferson quirky details about how Jefferson got out of bed in the morning, his obsession for peas, and learn the quote he told his wife:
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any.”
There’s a few pages dedicated to Jefferson’s friends: John Adam, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, and the ideals the team struggled for.
Kalman doesn’t pull any punches. She talks about slavery and addresses the truth of Sally Hemings. Jefferson had so many wise quotes that adults praise and sharing them with a four year old is especially wise:
“When you are angry, count TEN before you speak; if very angry, to ONE HUNDRED.”
The book ends with a visit to his burial grounds and notes regarding his epitaph.
As a whole it’s lovely and educational. When I told kiddo I was finally posting the review and asked her what she wanted to say about it, she said, “I think we should read it again.”
President’s Day is fast approaching. This one is worth having in your hands on that day.
Goodnight Goon
*A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books*
Title: Goodnight Goon
Author: Michael Rex
Every parent I know can recite or nearly recite Goodnight Moon. It’s a timeless favorite. I’m not sure why, kiddo loves it, but it has never really moved me personally.
“In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon…”
― Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon
It’s probably the cadence, the familiarity, the simplicity. It’s a lot of things. For kiddo, it’s also because she has the hallmark version that her out of state grandparents was able to record into… so she can flip through the pages and hear the story at her own leisure and will, the most exciting thing for a kid when they can’t read yet.
But to be fair, it’s boring. It’s appropriately sleepy, but I already have a hard enough time staying awake while I read bedtime stories.
I saw Goodnight Goon and took a risk. She loves Goodnight Moon, but she’s also wonderfully weird and gets very excited about monsters. I know my child, though, and sometimes she can be a bit of a purist. I wondered if a parody would be up her alley if it was just up mine.
In a cold gray tomb
There was a gravestone
And a black lagoon
And a picture of –
Martians taking over the moon
She laughed her butt off! She loved every page. Especially the end where the monster is cast under the bed for the night, “Goodnight Monsters Everywhere.”
“He’s under the bed!” she laughs.
“Maybe other kids will like it,” she says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because they’re little. And the monsters. I like the bat. That’s the kind of monster I like.” Of course, she watches me type the review and also insists that I “put an L in it.”
L
I should have known all would be well. After all, this is a kiddo that adored the The Swamps of Sleethe.
A Boy Called Dickens
* A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books *
Title: A Boy Called Dickens
Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrator: John Hendrix
As a homeschool family, we’re suckers for the educational picture book. Especially biographies.
A Boy Called Dickens tells the life of Charles Dickens. Obviously there are some creative liberties taken with Dickens’ boyhood thoughts and how he might have come to write certain stories, but that happens with any piece of biographical fiction.
As an adult Dickens fan, you recognize characters peeking around corners and haunting the boy’s subconscious as he works at the factory, tells stories to his friend, helps get his family out of debtor’s prison, and finally returns to school.
When I finished read the book, kiddo said, “Let’s read it again.”
I was out of breath from my strained fake British accent. I’m not an actress, but I like to make story time fun. It takes more effort than I’d care to admit. “No, I’m not reading it again right now.”
“Well, I think we should do the same thing with this one – let other kids read it!”
“You mean you recommend it?”
“Yes.” She gave it a literal thumbs up, with a tongue half sticking out the side of her mouth in thought.
Any biographical picture books you can find are great teaching tools, and you might as well fill them with as much information as you can while they’re sponges. History is easiest to remember as a tale, Dickens world and era becomes one you can touch and taste. Telling it from his boyhood makes it more relatable to a tiny one. Whether you’re a homeschool mom, or just someone who reads to your kids when you can, this book is a great resource; it’s colorful, factual, and engrossing.
(If you’re a seasonal reader, this one is perfectly wintery.)
Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime
Title: Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime
Author: Myra Wolfe
Illustrator: Maria Monescillo
Since I’ve been back to working in a bookstore full time (for the holidays), kiddo has had a love/hate relationship with her bed. She’s tired, exhausted even, by the end of her days romping at Grandmom’s house. But she wants to see me, she wants to chat. She wants to stay up and play with her Jake & the Neverland Pirate Lego set that isn’t allowed to travel with her on day trips. She loves Grandmom’s house, but a life in transition is stressful no matter how much fun you’re having.
We love rich colors. Dark greens, deep turquoises, night time blues… these are the colors that move us. The complimentary oranges, reds, and purples spark our attention.
Plus, we’ve got a thing for pirates, we two girls.
I couldn’t pass up Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime. There was a glorious pile of them at the store that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of, and despite having boxes of books in storage, I grabbed this. After all, kiddo just had a birthday and I didn’t get her a birthday book. It was picture book fate.
Charlotte Jane belongs on every kiddo’s bookshelf. Every kid, at some point in their lives, will think it’s a great idea to stay up all night playing. But every kid will then discover that the next day – they have lost their oomph. And Charlotte Jane had a lot of oomph to lose.
Pirate lingo, swashbuckling imagination, and true blue sentiments of the realm of childhood, Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime is a classic in its own time… or it should be. We’ve read it every night since I’ve brought it home. Sometimes twice.
Pamphlet disguised as a “book”
Title: Ultimate Money Management Guide for Kids (I have specifically NOT included the link here, because I am not promoting the purchase of this “book.”)
Author: Gregory O.
*TAKE NOTE* Length: 17 pages
It’s my fault, really. I never noticed the page length section on the Amazon.com site. I especially didn’t notice that ebooks state a page length equivalent in that section. In fact, I’m so blind, I had to LOOK for it after someone told me it was there. Somehow my eyes have always skipped over it. Amazon places it there, clear as day. I just never saw it.
I will never miss it again. I will always look now.
Ultimate Money Management Guide for Kids is little more than a pamphlet, and is far from “ultimate” or a “guide.” After all, it is only SEVENTEEN pages long.
It takes about ten to twenty minutes to read (depending on your reading rate – took me roughly 8 minutes total, a good 2 minutes of that was spent trying to figure out where the rest of the book was), and though there are five chapters, they are each short enough to be included in a brochure. The kind you see at seminars or conventions. Instead of being an ultimate guide, I’d consider it a solid introduction to themes you would like to teach.
There are few steps or how-to lists, mostly just conjecture and opinion. Good opinions, mind you, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable promoting this as a personal finance or parenting guide of any kind. Instead it’s a nice conversation starter.
Free ebooks of this title were being passed around several homeschool sites a few weeks back. I consider this an appropriate way to acquire this book. But the kindle format sells on Amazon for $2.99 and I can’t help but wonder how many people have been disappointed by the lack of substance and length for their money. Not many because the reviews on Amazon are mostly positive. This surprises me.
In addition to it’s lack of length, there were a few editing hiccups that I urge the author to review. As a writer, I understand all too well the frequency of errant typos (my own first edition has many of them), but in a document that could be considered little more than a lengthy blog post, I’m surprised the errors slipped through. I’m sure typos appear in my blog as well. There might be some in this very post because I rarely go through an edit – I’m not an editor. But I’m also not charging you to read this, so I feel in that regard I have a right to be a little lazy about punctuation placement and grammar choices. When I start charging $2.99 for you to read my blog, I promise to edit better. Then again, I’d never do that.
Early in the introduction of the title, the author writes, “Empowering children with good financial education will ensure that they are better prepared for life and all matter finance. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children about money.” Indeed. But he spent little time explaining how one should do so.
Gregory O. has some great ideas and on many points I agree with him. The book as a whole would make a marvelous opening speech for a seminar on teaching parents to teach their children about money matters, but it doesn’t stand well alone. I wish O. would have developed the topic more before releasing it as a “book” for sale at $2.99. (I know, I keep repeating this information, but it just hasn’t stopped baffling me. $2.99 for 17 pages! What?) Lower the price to 99 cents or keep it free and I have little to fuss about, because it serves as a positive starting point for parents to encourage economic intelligence in their children. It simply falls short of what else is being produced in the industry on the same topic.
I’ll take my 8 minutes back, please.
FRANK!
Title: Frank
Author/Illustrator: Connah Brecon
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Available for Purchase: October 2014
“Frank was late. Frank was always late,” Brecon’s book begins.
Frank! is full of dance parties, lizard king invasions, and a school teacher that won’t quit. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to discuss timeliness, pocket watches, and working together with your kiddo.
We read this over the summer for kid’s story time at Half Price Books Humble and one of our favorite features of the story are the three pigeons who follow Frank the Bear everywhere. We enjoying scoping them out and finding them napping against a tree trunk on one page and lurking on a fence board on another.
Brecon has other picture books, but this is his first to be published in the United States. He lives in Australia, and we were pretty excited to get a chance to review his debut book. Kiddo thought Frank! was pretty exciting and she can be seen “reading” the book here on the left (she’s not yet four in this picture). The other kiddo at story time that day was looking through another title we received earlier that month. We’re pleased with our first experience with Running Press Kids and look forward to more of their publications in the future.
Anakalian Whims 