Creating a Culture of Math: Books

Children love books.  Books are a window to the world greater than their own.  Within books, children can play with personas, meet friends, explore ideas, discover people different from themselves, and have great adventures.  Books can be either informative or fantastical.  Either type can be a good way to ensure math is included in your family culture.

For the youngest children, we have counting books and shape books readily available.  One of our favourites is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.  I also recommend Math Fables and Math Fables Too, by Greg Tang .  They are everywhere you can find books.  Pick one or two that your child enjoys and put it on your bookshelves, or borrow them from your local library.  Read them with your child; enjoy the story and count the pictures together. 

After counting, math books seem to vanish from the bookstore shelves.  We need to look a litte harder to find them.  After counting, children like to see numbers in use.  Some they might like include

• Other books by Greg Tang - These books encourage counting in ways other than by ones, but that doesn't mean your little one must count by 2's, 5's, or 10's.  Let them explore the books at whatever level they are at.
• See Inside Math, an Usborne flap book - Who doesn't like flap books?  In this book, children can explore math beyond counting:  shapes, geometry objects, number patterns, fractions and integer concepts, area and volume.  There are puzzles and problems.  Great fun.
• Math Curse, by Viking Juvenlie
• Equal Shmequal, by Virgina Kroll
• Marvelous Math:  A Book of Poems, by Lee Bennet Hopkins
• The Mission of Addition, by Brian P. Cleary
• Full House:  An Invitation to Fractions, by Dayle Ann Dodds
• Missing Math:  A Number Mystery, by Loreen Leady
• A Day's Adventure in Math Wonderland, by Jin Akiyama
• Math Start books, by Stuart J. Murphy

A little further in depth are

• A Math Adventure books, published by Charlesbridge Publishing
• The Adventures of Penrose, the Mathematical Cat, by Theoni Pappas
• Life of Fred, published by JOY Centre of Learning
• Maths Quest books, by David Glover
• Spaghetti and Meatballs for All, by Marilyn Burns
• Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream, by Cindy Neuschwander
• Usborne Math Dictionaries
• The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, by by Larry Gonick and Woolcott Smith
• The Cartoon Guide to Calculus, by Larry Gonick

Does your child like history?  Consider books about math history:

• A Place For Zero, A Math Adventure book, published by Charlesbridge Publishing
• Science in Egypt, by Geraldine Woods
• Blockhead:  The Life of Fibonnaci, by Joseph D'Agnese
• The Prince of Mathematics:  Carl Friedrich Guass, by M. B. W. Tent
• Math and the Mona Lisa:  The Art and Science of Leonardo da Vinci, by Bulent Atalay
• Mathematicians Are People and Mathematicians Are People, Too, published by Dale Seymour Publications 

The math books are available, if not in the quantities that other storybooks are.  We just need to look a little harder.  They are enjoyable stories and the illustrations that come with many of these are wonderful.  Enjoy them with your children and enjoy them yourselves!