Review of Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries, by Eugenia Cheng, illustrated by Aleksandra Artymowska

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries

Ten Interactive Adventures in Mathematical Wonderland

by Eugenia Cheng
illustrated by Aleksandra Artymowska

Big Picture Press (Candlewick), 2021. First published in 2020 in the United Kingdom. 30 pages.
Review written January 4, 2022, from my own copy
Starred Review
2022 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Grades 3-5

Oh, this book is delightful! It’s a lift-the-flap adventure that demonstrates intriguing mathematical oddities. I know – that doesn’t sound amazing and inviting, but this book is both of those things.

A girl named Molly gets a series of mysterious notes. We get to lift flaps and read these notes. The notes tell her what to do to get past that page. The first note, for example, tells her to open her window and turn her room inside out – at least in her imagination. Flaps open the window. Then on the next page, we’ve got an inside-out world, explaining the mathematical concept of inverses.

Some of the pages have puzzles in the flaps. An impossible staircase Molly can only escape by lifting the flaps. A maze Molly can only traverse if you lift the correct flaps. Figuring out which flaps can be folded into a cube. Weaving strips so that pink squares are hidden. Turning paper dials to reveal the correct answer. Each page has something different to figure out or uncover, and it leads you through the book along with Molly.

And the mathematical concepts are fun ones. This book helps kids think about dimensions, tiling, self-similarity, symmetry, combinations, fractals, and more. After completing Molly’s adventure, five colorful pages give the reader more mathematical information.

I had a lot of fun going through this book – and I’m an adult who already knows all the concepts. I would love to watch a kid go through it. Of course, the one drawback is that with all the flaps, this is not a good choice for a library collection. But I think a kid who had it at home would find themselves returning to it again and again.

Note: Even though this is presented as a story about Molly and is thus technically Fiction, the focus is on the mathematical concepts, so I think it fits better with Children’s Nonfiction, which is where I’ll file it.

eugeniacheng.com
candlewick.com

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Review of The Wedding Portrait, by Innosanto Nagara

Children's Nonfiction Review, Current Issues, History 0

The Wedding Portrait

The Story of a Photograph and Why Sometimes We Break the Rules

by Innosanto Nagara

Triangle Square, 2017. 36 pages.
Review written August 5, 2020, from a library book

The Wedding Portrait is a picture book about activism for kids. It’s all framed by the author’s wedding portrait, which was clipped from a newspaper and features armed guards beyond the happy couple.

The author explains things in a way a child can understand:

We usually follow the rules. But sometimes, when you see something wrong – more wrong than breaking the rules, and by breaking the rules you could stop it – you may decide that you should break the rules.

Then he talks about various people in history who have broken rules to stand up for what’s right. He covers Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks fighting segregation; Indian people making salt in defiance of the British empire; the U’wa people in Colombia standing up against oil drilling on their land; a boycott by farm workers of tomatoes; and other forms of Civil Disobedience.

Eventually, he comes to himself and his wife, who met at a protest and decided to get married at a protest against nuclear weapons.

The author defines terms along the way and provides a wide variety of examples. It’s all framed with that wedding portrait, and there’s an epilogue following up by talking about different ways of taking action.

In current times, children may have a lot of questions about protests, and this book beautifully explains why people sometimes think it’s right to break the rules.

I do like the inclusion of this paragraph in the middle of the book:

Now. I’ll bet all this is giving you some ideas, isn’t it? Do you think some of the things that you do when you’re not following the rules should be considered civil disobedience? Do you think hiding under the bed to avoid taking a bath is a kind of sit-in? Is refusing to eat your dinner a kind of boycott?

Maybe. (Maybe not.)

As you can see, this book gives you lots to talk about.

AisforActivist.com
sevenstories.com

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Review of Classified, by Traci Sorell, illustrations by Natasha Donovan

Award Winners, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Classified

The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer

by Traci Sorell
illustrations by Natasha Donovan

Millbrook Press, 2021. 32 pages.
Review written January 5, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2022 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Grades 3-5
2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book, Picture Books

I’m so happy about a recent burst of picture book biographies of distinguished women mathematicians and engineers! They would have inspired me as a child, and they inspire me as an adult.

This book tells the story of Mary Golda Ross, a member of the Cherokee nation, who excelled in math, even though she was surrounded by boys in her classes. The book portrays her as always learning. She became a teacher after graduating from college, but during World War II got a job working on fighter jets for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. That job led her to take engineering classes at a local university to become Lockheed’s first female engineer. After the war, she worked in a classified group developing space travel and satellites.

I like the way Cherokee values are introduced at the beginning and throughout the text we’re told how she demonstrated them: “gaining skills in all areas of life, working cooperatively with others, remaining humble when others recognize your talents, and helping ensure equal education and opportunity for all.”

A whole spread at the end is devoted to Mary’s work helping others not have to face the barriers she did:

Although her work was classified, Mary still had much to share. She never stopped recruiting American Indians and young women to study math and science and helping support them to become engineers.

Mary’s work and her legacy of service have helped many others become trailblazers, too.

I learned in the timeline at the back that she helped found the Los Angeles section of the Society of Women Engineers and later a scholarship was established in her name.

A lovely book about a remarkable woman I’m glad to now know about.

tracisorell.com
natashadonovan.com

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Review of Buzzing with Questions, by Janice N. Harrington, illustrated by Theodore Taylor III

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review 0

Buzzing with Questions

The Inquisitive Mind of Charles Henry Turner

by Janice N. Harrington
illustrated by Theodore Taylor III

Calkins Creek (Highlights), 2019. 48 pages.
Review written August 27, 2020, from a library book

Buzzing with Questions is a picture book biography about African American scientist Charles Henry Turner, who was born in 1867 in Ohio, when it was unusual for an African American to be a scientist. I like the way the author portrays him from boyhood as a kid with lots of questions.

Charles Henry Turner asked so many questions that his teacher urged him to “go and find out.”

And Charles did.

What I really thought was wonderful about this biography was that it described the creative experiments Charles did with insects. He put spiders in different environments to see if their web construction changed. For multiple times, he knocked down a spider’s web made in one place, and eventually the spider gave up and moved, thus showing that it could learn and adapt.

He performed many experiments to find how ants find their way back to their nests. He showed that bees have a sense of time by putting out jam for them at breakfast, lunch, and dinner – but then changing it to only breakfast. Then he did more experiments to determine that bees can see color. He taught cockroaches to find their way through a maze, and later watched caterpillars find their way in a vertical maze.

I like the way this book talks about a scientist who worked hard to answer questions by doing experiments – and tells kids enough about the experiments to capture their imagination. Science is about finding out – and Charles Henry Turner’s life illustrates doing exactly that.

janiceharrington.com
theodore3.com
calkinscreekbooks.com

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Review of Wait, Rest, Pause: Dormancy in Nature, by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Wait, Rest, Pause

Dormancy in Nature

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Millbrook Press, 2019. 32 pages.
Starred Review
Review written October 22, 2019, from a library book

Here’s a children’s picture book about science simple enough to use in Preschool Storytime – yet it taught me some things.

The book looks at six creatures that go dormant for some amount of time. Each one gets two spreads, the first about what happens when they are dormant, and the second about what happens when they are active again. The language is simple and repetitive between creatures, and the spreads are filled with big, beautiful pictures.

Here’s an example:

If you were a dormant ladybug, you would…
fatten up,
pile up,
stiffen up.

You would swarm into a ladybug pile, sharing warmth together.

You would pause.

In spring you…
wiggle awake,
feast,
flit away.

The dormant creatures featured include trees, ladybugs, Arctic ground squirrels, chickadees (dormant for a few hours on cold winter nights), alligators, and earthworms (dormant when it’s too dry).

Here’s how the book finishes off:

If you were dormant, you would be…
silent,
still,
waiting,
just waiting,
until…

maybe the spring,
maybe the warmth,
maybe the rain
helps you…
stir,
burst,
appear!

This is a simple and clear science presentation for very young learners. There are more details at the back, including different types of dormancy.

marcieatkins.com
lernerbooks.com

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Review of Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum, illustrated by Andrew Joyner

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum

illustrated by Andrew Joyner

Random House, 2019. 77 pages.
Starred Review
Review written September 13, 2019, from a library book.

This fascinating picture book look at Art is based on manuscript notes and sketches found in Dr. Seuss’s files. I haven’t been completely impressed with some of the other things dug out of his collections after his death – but this book is a delightful way to get kids thinking about Art.

Here’s how the book begins:

ART.
What’s it all about?

This is what ART is about…
ART is when an artist looks at something…
… like a horse, for instance…
… and they see something in that horse that excites them…
so they do something about it.
They tell you about it…
… in any one of a number of ways.

Artists have been excited by horses for as long as there have been artists. But what an artist tells us about horses and how they tell us is different for every artist.

What an artist sees in a horse depends on many different things – their background, likes and dislikes, you name it.

So come with me…

Let’s look at how different artists have seen horses. Maybe we can find some new ways of looking at them ourselves?

The pages that follow incorporate 35 different pieces of art that include horses. They talk about what the artist may have seen in a horse to express it that way. The book goes through different time periods and styles of art as well – all looking at horses.

The result is brilliant – lots and lots of artwork, all expressing horses, and all looking completely different.

There is extensive back matter, with more information about each piece of art and details about Dr. Seuss and his relationship with art (He was self-taught.) and the manuscript and sketches for this book and how they went from there to completion.

Future artists should read this book.

Seussville.com
rhcbooks.com

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Review of Just Like Beverly, by Vicki Conrad, illustrated by David Hohn

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Just Like Beverly

A Biography of Beverly Cleary

by Vicki Conrad
illustrated by David Hohn

Little Bigfoot (Sasquatch Books), 2019. 52 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a delightful picture book biography of Beverly Cleary. I’ve read her own story of her life, and this book does a great job of pulling out details that would be interesting to children.

I love the way the illustrator makes Beverly look very much like Ramona.

The book focuses on Beverly’s childhood. She struggled with reading, because she had smallpox while the other children in her class were learning to read. But then a wonderful teacher came along and helped Beverly catch up, and she discovered the joy of reading. Later teachers encouraged her in her writing ability.

Beverly studied to become a children’s librarian, and eventually worked to write stories especially for the boys who came into her library. They wanted stories about “kids like us” – exactly what Beverly had wanted when she was their age. The book points out how she used her own childhood experiences in her books.

There are eight pages of back matter, where I found a listing of some of her accomplishments and honors, including the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress. National Drop Everything and Read Day was established in her honor on her ninetieth birthday, and there’s a Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in Portland, Oregon, where she grew up. Beverly Cleary is still alive, though the book wisely doesn’t make much of this fact, and simply mentions that she celebrated her hundredth birthday on April 12, 2016. ***Note: Beverly Cleary has died since I wrote this review. She lived to be 104. I think I wrote this review in 2019 and decided to finally just post it!

This book is a wonderful tribute to a great author, written at the level of children ready for her books.

beverlycleary.com
sasquatchbooks.com

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Review of The Genius Under the Table, by Eugene Yelchin

Award Winners, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Genius Under the Table

Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

by Eugene Yelchin

Candlewick Press, 2021. 201 pages.
Review written December 2, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review
2022 Capitol Choices selection
2022 Sidney Taylor Honor Book

Eugene Yelchin tells us his story of growing up in Leningrad under the Soviet regime. The characters in his story are larger than life, whom we meet on the first page, loudly complaining about American tourists cutting in front of them in the line to get into Lenin’s mausoleum.

Yevgeny was only six years old in that incident and was somewhat overwhelmed by seeing Lenin’s mummy. Their family lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment and the only place for Yevgeny to sleep was under his grandma’s big table. He liked the private space under the table, and used the bottom of the table to draw pictures.

His mother worked for the Vaganova Ballet Academy, and was obsessed with Mikhail Barishnikov, the academy’s most famous graduate. This obsession gets woven through the book, as his mother wishes Yevgeny had talent like Misha. And their family’s discussion of the likelihood of him defecting gets their own building’s spy appointed to accompany him on his trip to Canada.

Yevgeny’s big brother Victor has talent – he’s a champion figure skater. But what can Yevgeny do? He fakes interest in ballet to please his mother, but that’s not going to work out very well.

Then propaganda starts coming on the radio and even among their neighbors against Jews. Eugene’s child’s perspective of all these events is both funny and poignant. And all of it is illustrated with his drawings – which he tried to reproduce from what he drew under his grandma’s table.

The book ends rather abruptly, after a very sad event. He tries to make it hopeful, and I know he ended up leaving Soviet Russia, but I wish the book had given a hint of how he got there.

Overall, this book is packed with humor and insight. A fun look for kids at a different world – behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

candlewick.com

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Review of Maryam’s Magic, by Megan Reid, illustrations by Aaliya Jaleel

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

Maryam’s Magic

The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani

by Megan Reid
illustrations by Aaliya Jaleel

Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins), 2021. 36 pages.
Review written December 16, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

Many years ago, having just graduated from college, I went to grad school in the field of mathematics at UCLA. Out of 120 people beginning math grad students there that year, only 5 of us were women. So in 2014, when Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman (and the first Iranian) to win the Fields Medal — the top prize in mathematics — I was delighted.

And here’s a picture book biography of this groundbreaking woman! Another thing to be delighted about. Young children can learn that brilliant mathematicians can be female.

The book tells how Maryam thought she didn’t like math as a child, but wanted to be a writer and an artist. Then she discovered geometry — and the author of this picture book says she took a storytelling artists’ approach to doing math.

It’s always a challenge to represent the work of mathematicians in a picture book biography. I like the loopy artwork the illustrator chose, tying in with the author’s explanation of Maryam’s process:

When it was hard to solve a difficult equation, Maryam covered her house’s floor with big sheets of paper and knelt to trace them with loops and lines, just as she had when she was young.

By now, Maryam was married with a child of her own. She drew so much that sometimes her daughter, Anahita, would tell people proudly that her mommy was a painter.

One of Maryam’s theorems was called “the magic wand theorem.” Here’s the explanation of that theorem:

She explained it using the image of a pool table, with balls that zigged and zagged forever. If you covered the balls in paint, how long would it take for their scattered paths to color the table completely?

Maryam’s magic wand math helped people all over the world. Astronauts could plot safer courses for their rocket ships. Meteorologists could predict weather patterns with more speed and accuracy. Doctors could understand how dangerous diseases grew and spread.

Sadly, Maryam died of breast cancer three years after winning the Fields Medal. This book beautifully explains her lasting legacy in a way children can understand.

meganreid.co
aaliyamj.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Review of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

The 1619 Project

Born on the Water

by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson
illustrated by Nikkolas Smith

Kokila (Penguin Random House), 2021. 44 pages.
Review written December 27, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

This book, like Your Legacy (which is for even younger children), shows African American children that the history of their people didn’t start with slavery. The book is presented as a series of poems. The story begins with a girl asked to do a school assignment, with a family tree and telling which country her family is from. She’s upset that she can only go back three generations. Then her grandmother tells her about their people, who were born on the water.

And she begins the story in Africa. There are ten lovely pages telling about their ancestors in Africa. Some bits of that:

Their story does not begin
with whips and chains.

They spoke Kimbundu,
had their own words
for love
for friend
for family.

Their hands had a knowing.
They knew how to hold a baby close,
how to rock the child to keep her from crying.

But the white people took them away and kidnapped them.

Ours is no immigration story.

They did not get to pack bags stuffed
with cherished things, with the doll grandmama
had woven from tall grass,
with the baby blanket handed down
from generation to generation all the way back,
so far back that it carried the scent of the ancestors.

We’re told about the White Lion, the first ship to bring slavery to America in 1619.

They had no things. But they had their minds.
The old ways, the harvest songs, the just-right mix of herbs
etched in their memories.

They had their bodies. Histories and bloodlines
and drums pulsing in their veins.
With trembling fingers
they braided seeds into their hair, defiantly hiding
tiny pieces of home
to plant one day
in new soils.

Many died on that ship, almost half, whether from despair or defiance or sickness and hunger. But those who survived resolved to live no matter what. Here’s the part that explains the title of the book:

Packed in dark misery,
strangers chained together
head to feet, hip to hip,
in the bottom of a ship
called the White Lion,
they saw that these strangers —
men, women, children, kidnapped, too,
from many villages —
these were their people now.

These many people
became one people,
a new people.

And that is why the people say,
We were born on the water.
We come from the people who refused to die.

The rest of the book talks about what those people born on the water accomplished, despite being enslaved. How they resisted, simply by living on. How they used their gifts and their intelligence to overcome and accomplish great things.

“Never forget you come from a people
of great strength,” Grandma says.
“Be proud of our story, your story.”

Let me add a note that I think it’s terrible it will be controversial to get this book out in the schools where kids can read it. This book is not shaming white people. Yes, it tells the truth about what many white people did. But the point of the story is that Black children can rightly be proud in the hope and resilience and intelligence and resourcefulness of their ancestors. And it would be great for white children to also know about this heritage their classmates proudly bear.

The story of African Americans does not begin with slavery.

nikolehannahjones.com
reneewatson.net
nikkolas.art
penguin.com

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