How High Can a Dinosaur Count?: ...and Other Math Mysteries

by Valorie Fisher

Believe it or not, once Bessie balanced a tower of 8 beets. But today, when she tries to balance 8 beets . . . 3 fall. How many beets does Bessie balance today? A clever text and imaginative art mesh to create playful, simple math problems right on target for ages 5–99 . . . anyone who loves the magic of numbers! In this School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, budding young mathematicians can help Heloise add her dimes, nickels, and pennies to see which hat in Madame Millie’s Hat Shop she can buy. Or they can tell time with Lulu at the Tutti-Frutti Zoo, where Lollipop Licking begins at 9:00 sharp.

Genres: Mathematics, Picture Books, Nonfiction, Childrens, Counting, Education, Dinosaurs

40 pages, Hardcover

First published February 14, 2006

Reviews

[Rebekah Nice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of simple story problems is so much fun and the illustrations are amazing. The simple addition and subtraction problems would be good for later kindergartners and first graders who are learning to take apart and put together numbers larger than 10. There are also a couple of pages that work on number recognition. By far my favorite part of this book is the list of extension questions in the back that correspond with each page. These questions give you multiple extra problems per page that steadily get more complex. There is a lot of re-read value here. I highly recommend it to other teachers.

In my classroom, I'd probably use this book as a math warm up to get kids started before diving in to the lesson of the day. I'm not sure this would extend well in to other content areas, although there are several scenarios involving money that could be extended to social studies content. In all this book would be a welcome addition to my classroom.

[Ariadne Acosta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book because it's interactive and students get to figure out what number the book is looking for.

[Julie Culver · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is just a bunch of lame arithmetic story problems.

[Mackenzie babst · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 7 year old loved this book at bed time!

[Amy Lohse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically a book of story problems. My kids like bedtime math better

[Emily Suarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combines mystery with math, which is basically killing two bird with one stone.

[Lynn Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this brightly illustrated picture book simple math problems are presented in fun ways.

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The ONLY Dinosaur math mystery is literally on the outside cover.

[Sarah Bringhurst Familia · Rating 5 out of 5]

As well as our formal math program, I schedule time reading "math literature" into our homeschooling days. And this is one of the more delightful finds off our library shelf. Each page has a whimsical illustration, and then an alliterative word problem that goes along with it. For example:

The heavenly hats at Madame Millie's Millinery are brimming with blossoms, butterflies, and bows. Heloise wants all of them, but she has only 2 dimes, 2 nickels, and three pennies to spend. Can Heloise buy a hat?

The pictures contain clues to help the reader solve the problem (in this case, each hat has a price tag). The back of the book contains several other word problems based on the same illustration.

This book is a cut above a lot of other math readers for several reasons:

#1 Nice illustrations.
#2 Non-annoying text. I can't count the number of math books I've left at the library because they were composed in doggerel that hurt my ears.
#3 The problems are like real-world problems, but they're fun and entertaining. They involve multiple steps, and require the reader to think, but they're not too hard for my 7-year-old to figure out.
#4 My daughter loves it.

[Lisa Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful concept book about math. The pictures are delightful and whimsical. Many of the math problems are too difficult for a young child in pre-school to solve, but some of them are simple enough if the question was explained in a thorough manner. You can also have the child point out certain items in the picture. The illustrations in the book were absolutely amazing. This book had pictures that all children would enjoy. It is important to have various types of books, including math. The more integrated a child's learning is, the more successful he or she will be in the classroom. Again, this is more of a mathmatical word problem book than an actual story. The questions asked are fun and amusing, but probably a little too difficult for a younger audience.

[Candice Mckinnon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is great if children need to work on word problems because it has a variety of problems within the book. They range from money problems to basic addition and subtraction. The pictures are large, colorful, and have clues that helps the children solve the problem. Teachers could incorporate this book into a math lesson about word problems.

[Evelyn Matias · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is cute and I think it has great examples in it to use to teach math. Each page is a different math mystery so you may need to solve an adding problem, subtracting, odd/even etc. The title doesn't really have anything to do with the math mysteries that are done on each page but it's still a great source of examples.

[Betty Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could have used this picture book math "word problem" book when I was in the first grade. Valorie Fisher's computer generated and hand colored 3-D photographs give the child reader visual space to look at as the child ponders the answers to the math questions.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow,I never knew they had books like this!

They are like miny story problems and very well written which can help kids very much with math, but also reading at the same time!

I like this book a lot.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has many math problems on a 3rd or 4th grade level. Some of the questions are kind of hard to understand because of all of the alliterations. I liked how there were many different kinds of math questions, as well as many more math questions at the end of the book.

[Kyla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really cool and the illustrations are bright and fun. The book shows the number of an object on one page and you can see the picture on the other that relates to it. The students could count the 6 red phones and this is good for teaching children to count.

[The Brothers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice overview of a lot of different kinds of math problems. Each math problem has a little story and illustration to go with it. In the back are more word problems to go with the pictures if you wanted to expand on them.

Very good illustrations!

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book on different ways to solve math problems is both entertaining and enjoyable. The examples used helps with addition, subtraction, and word problem solving, as well as telling time, and the use of odd, and even numbers. An excellent book for developing math skills.

[Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that had to deal with math. It was alright, but not very interesting.

[Katrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Give activities for each page (ex. can you find all the prime numbers on this page). Writing seemed to try to be rhthmic and poetic but wasn't really.

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful illustrations. to lengthy for a story time.
Fifteen miniature worlds, each showcasing a math problem.

[Codie Gates · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains word problems on every page that range in difficulty. The illustrations are great and the book is fun.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was fun for my 5.5 year old during the first half of the math questions. Then it got harder and wasn't as interesting to him. He did like the search for the numbers pages though.

[Jc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a nice little book, lots of color and whimsy. A kid could fave fun with this and still build some math skills. Having an adult to plow thru the answers in the back would be most helpful.

[Cheyenne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for problem of the day at the end of Kindergarten.

[Mikayla Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a very good math-literature piece. Not only where there really well written story problems, but the pictures were also tied into the problems.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silly, tongue twisting words problems make math fun and approachable in this cute picture book. My 4 and 6 year olds loved it!

[Mbrooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great concept math book. Excellent use of allertiaton.