The Math Book for Girls: and Other Beings Who Count

by Valerie Wyatt

This entertaining title in the Books for Girls series shows girls -- and boys, too -- that math is part of everyday life. They can try the math puzzles and activities to see for themselves how useful -- and how much fun -- math can be. They will also meet real women who use math in their jobs every day. Kids can learn why fractions are important when they bake a cake, develop spatial visualization skills by building a geodesic dome big enough to play in, use geometry to design unique wrapping paper, discover how grids simplify drawing pictures, and much more.

Genres: Childrens, Mathematics

64 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

Valerie Wyatt is an award-winning editor and author of more than 14 non-fiction books, many of them about science. She also writes on historical topics. Asked if she has a favorite book, she says it’s always the one she’s just finished.

She began her career at OWL magazine in 1978. It was her job to answer readers’ questions. Kids would write in and ask, Do fish sleep? or Why can’t you sneeze with your eyes open? To track down the answers, she would interview scientists. From there she branched out into books.

She is also a children’s book editor and has edited more than a hundred children’s books. In 2004 she received the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence.

She loves writing and editing for children because it’s not just about words. “You have to think about the photographs and illustrations as well and make sure they fit together,” she says. “It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.”

She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her husband and dog, MacPherson MacDonald.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Math Book for Girls and Other Being Who Count contains four sections: “The Mathematics of You,” which imparts information about proportion, whether a girl could fit into her doll’s clothes and how much hair grows in a year as well as other cool body facts; “Shape Up!” which explores dimensions with folding papers shapes, using a bike to measure perimeter, calculating area, building a 3-D dome, and playing with patterns; “Party Math,” which shows how to make a tangram, print tessellated wrapping paper, draw a map, create secret-code invitations, decorate with symmetry, play math games and even order a pizza by graphing guests’ choices; and “Math to the Rescue,” which uses measurement and geometry concepts to bake a cake, help draw, calculate probability to win a bet and discover the many sides of topology. Parents, teachers, librarians, and group leaders will want to turn to the back of the book in which the author dispenses advice for encouraging girls’ confidence in math as well as introducing them to math-related careers and the women who work in them as role models. The back of the book additionally offers a glossary of math terminology, answers to math problems as well as help with calculations. Nora (short for Natural Observation Research Activator) is the “fairy godmother” offering advice and instruction in this text full of pastel illustrations of girls discovering math in the everyday world. More importantly, this book is full of clear explanations of math concepts and interesting math puzzles sure to make boys envious that they don’t have such a very fun book about math just for them. A school librarian will want to point out to classroom teachers the grade three math standards this text can meet while children’s librarians at a public library will perhaps find inspiration for interesting and compelling programming (California Department of Education, 1997).

[Esther]

Story problems according to themes on double-spread pages.