I See a Pattern Here
by Bruce Goldstone
Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2015. 32 pages.
Starred Review
I love Bruce Goldstone’s books about math concepts. They are bright and colorful and draw kids in – and explain the math concepts in simple language, with helpful, dramatic visuals.
This one is about patterns. He explains them using simple language and has a little box giving the mathematical vocabulary where it’s appropriate. As in his other books, he starts simply and builds.
The book covers repeating patterns, then translations (“slides”), rotations (“turns”), reflections (“flips”), symmetry (“equal sides”), scaling (“changing sizes”), and tessellations (“tile patterns”). The many, many varied pictures make the concepts so clear.
For example, he uses photos of quilt blocks, tiles in the Alhambra, kaleidoscope images, lace patterns, tire treads, animals, architecture, beads, stamped patterns, and a 2000-year-old Peruvian cloak.
This is a beautiful book that will get kids noticing the patterns around them and give them a new vocabulary for talking about those patterns.
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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.
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