Jonathan Litton

All the animals jump into their brightly colored cars to race to the finish! Who will win?

This board book is constructed with increasing smaller "finger holes" - cutouts in the pages where a child could place his or her fingers while listening to the book and/or to turn the pages. Honestly, these aren't really all that exciting and probably don't promote as much interaction as intended. But the book is interesting enough without that. The book features a lot of colors, animals, and different show more vehicles with corresponding identification in the text. The story is a little bit of an update on the Aesopian fable "The Tortoise and the Hare," but with slightly less preaching.

While the board book construction makes it seem like this book is for very young readers, it is more text heavy than some other board books. So it may be better suited for older toddlers and preschoolers than for infants and younger toddlers, but that of course is always dependent on the individual child or group of children. show less

This book is the perfect anecdote to math’s unwarranted reputation as hard or dull, by showing you how math can be both fun and exciting.

Using cartoons, pop-up parts, bright colors, and fun examples, the creators of this book make concepts from the golden triangle to tessellation to data collection interesting and easy to understand. Take fibonacci numbers: what kid could resist checking out flower petals or snail shells to learn about them?

Kids who read this will be thrilled to share show more with other kids how one can understand Pascal’s triangle using “hockey sticks” or the story of how the inventor of chess outsmarted the king who offered him a gift for his invention. You can learn how to win at game shows and a clever way to square numbers. Fractions are much more appealing when you see how to figure out how much pizza or cake you might want. And use the movable wrecking ball to figure out which numbers can be divided and which are prime!

Evaluation: Mesmerizing Math provides a fabulous way to add pizzazz to learning math. The pages are packed with fascinating facts and interesting activities. Jonathan Litton is a math teacher and Thomas Flintham illustrates other non-fiction works for children using the same pop-up techniques.

Recommended for ages 7-10. show less

I've been trying different books recently from the My Little World series and striking out. They're fun, but just not quite, exactly what I want.

This one starts out with Little Blue who is all alone. He goes looking for the other owlets and finds them one by one. Each is a different color and adds one number (Little Green is number two, etc.).

The pictures are bright and full of bold shapes and colors. There are graduated die cut holes for the owl's eyes that provide a sensory experience. The show more book is a sturdy square.

But...it's a little too busy. I can't get on board with some of the color choices, especially the one with a lavender background and Little Blue in shades of, well, blue. The many bright colors, the different shades, the numbers, the additional details on each page, it's just too much. I wanted to see more contrast - if they'd stuck with the background and colors of the cover and just focused on the numbers that would have been better.

Verdict: It's not a bad board book and I'm not sorry I bought it, but if you're budget is limited it isn't the best of the series.

ISBN: 9781589255951; Published 2014 by Tiger Tales; Purchased for the library show less

"Mesmerizing Math" by Jonathan Lin throws the reader into what can only be described as mesmerizing world of numbers, shapes and mathematics. A book which I believe would be best used as a supplemental text as opposed to a read aloud about math this book. This book, though, the pages are full of information seems like it would be a fun way to address math topics which students might be struggling with or learning about a new topic. I believe the bright pictures and interactive pages would show more create a fun text to learn about a subject which children do not always see as fun. show less