The Wing Wing Brothers Math Spectacular! by Ethan Long
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This arithmetic book demonstrates each arithmetic concept with carnival tricks (plate spinning, pie juggling). Unless it were a read-aloud it wouldn't be what helped kids learn the vocabulary and meanings. For example, it defines the 'plus sign' in words, "+ means plus". It's one of those things where if you already know how to read the words, you probably already know what a plus sign is. People who are trying to write to work with the curriculum should probably talk to some school teachers.
Some funny gags and an animator's sensibility to the drawings are both a plus to the book making it a decent experience. But amid the larger stack of informational books, I had a hard time picking this one up and finishing it. Despite the artwork, the arithmetic presentation, the storyline, was boring.
Hmmm. Back matter correlates the book to the Common Core State Standards. I guess we'll be seeing more of that in the coming years, but it's a bit of a shock to see it so prominent in the back matter, as if this is more important than the fact-checking which gets much smaller print under the CCSS blurb.
No designer credited. One of the things that drives me crazy in books that use comic strip boxes in picturebooks is when you can't tell whether a sequence of boxes is supposed to go all the way across the gutter or whether you're supposed to wrap around to the left again when you hit the gutter. This book had a few spreads where the design of facing pages made this difficult to navigate.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment