Partial review of one of my favorite books for those who enjoy a great mathematical tale!
By JIM HOLT Published: January 9, 2009
For the slightly older child, “The Real Princess: A Mathemagical Tale” ought to prove a beguiling mix of number lore and fairy tale. The plot elements will be familiar: three princes looking for brides, a king with three bags of gold and a queen with nine magic peas. But running through Brenda Williams’s story is a riot of numerical coincidences, some turning on the curious fact that if you take various multiples of nine (18, 27, 36, 45 etc.) and add up the digits (1+8, 2+7, 3+6, 4+5), you always get nine back again. This is the kind of hidden pattern that children delight in discovering. And if some of the artsier parents fail to get it, they’ll at least smile at Sophie Fatus’s illustrations, which have a little of Marc Chagall in them, and a little of Joan Miró.
The Real Princess - Hardcover
| Travel to a land far away and step into a fantastical world of math & magic! |
A classic with a twist, this number-crunching take on “The Princess and the Pea” features not just one princess, but three, not to mention four horses, five dogs, six grooms, seven gardeners, and all kinds of chances for young mathematicians to put their adding and subtracting to the test! It includes a "Test Your Math Skills" section.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment