Marilyn Burns

I liked this book for a few reasons. First, I liked the author’s use of the various characters. They were all very realistic, and they behaved like a “regular” family. At the huge family dinner, with all 32 relatives, they were all talking at once, having various side conversations, and almost everyone speaking over each other. Also, there were a few characters that never let anyone else get a word in, and they insisted on being correct all the time. Not only is that behavior to be show more expected at any large family gathering, but it was also comical. Another thing I enjoyed about this book, was the concept behind it. This story was a mathematical story, but in a discrete way. At the end of the book, the reader realizes that the way some of the relatives were moving the tables together was not working because every time they connected two tables together, they lost two potential seats. There were 32 relatives in attendance, therefore 8 individual (not pushed together) tables of four was the solution to the seating problem. I have never read a book that was a “mathematical story” and I thought it was very interesting that this book had a plot, but still taught a math concept. The main message of the story is to always think things through before you do it, so that you don’t have to start over from nothing when you realized you’ve made a mistake. show less

The triangle is busy, but not content. Hoping to learn and experience more the triangle asks the local shapeshifter:

"I think if I had just one more side and one more angle,
my life would be more interesting."

This is an amusing approach to shape identification. Not only would it help children identify a variety of different shapes such as triangles, squares, and pentagons, but it would also illustrate the many places children can look around their world and find these shapes. For anyone show more struggling with intangible aspects of math this would be a good book to show that it's all around us and we put it to all sorts of uses every day.

Would love to read this and take a walk and see which of the mentioned friends children can spot and identify! show less

I really enjoyed this book for both its surface-level educational value and the way in which it explored more complex themes as a children book. THE GREEDY TRIANGLE tells the story of a triangle wanting to be more, so it visits a shapeless shapeshifter (a quality detail that I absolutely adored) that transformed it into a quadrilateral, then a pentagon, and further on. The story addresses the saying "the grass is greener on the other side", The triangle, after adding another side, would show more eventually still become dissatisfied after a while. The story introduces not only individuality, but also the principal of "less is more". As a triangle, it could be so many things as the shape is very involved in architecture and design. In the end, it is happy to return back to its normal 3-sided shape and is very content with that. show less

I liked this book for a few different reasons. I really liked the illustrations that were in this book and I thought that they enhanced the story. I liked how the audience could see the shape change each time it went through the machine. Additionally, I really liked the writing that was used in this story. I felt that it was very engaging and kept the readers interested. I thought that it was exciting to guess what was going to happen next with the shapes. In my opinion, the overall message show more of this story was to be happy with who you are and to not try and change it. show less