This title deals with the biggest mathematical mystery in nature - Fibonacci numbers! Named after a famous mathematician, the number pattern is simple: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...Each number in the sequence comes from adding the two numbers before it. What's the mystery? The pattern crops up in the most unexpected places. You'll find it in the disk of a sunflower, the skin of a pineapple, and the spiral of a nautilus shell. No one knows how nature came up with the sequence. Sarah C. and Richard P. Campbell introduce the Fibonacci sequence through a series of stunning photographs. Young readers will soon be seeing nature through new eyes, looking for Fibonacci numbers in daisies, pinecones, leaf patterns, seashells, and more.
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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 3–6—This slim, attractive volume makes clear the appearance and significance of Fibonacci numbers in nature, both through simple, precise explanations and eye-catching photographs. With plenty of white space and crisp images, the design of the book is appealing. Details about Fibonacci himself, other interesting mathematical concepts such as the "golden ratio," and a glossary are included. With such an obscure topic, this book may have a difficult time finding an audience, but math teachers looking to add an interesting element to a lesson will find this a solid choice, and future mathematicians will be drawn into the magic and mystery of Fibonacci numbers.—Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
From Booklist
This book introduces the Fibonacci sequence, which begins 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. Each new number is determined by adding the two preceding it. The presentation uses color photos of flowers with different numbers of petals to illustrate the beginning of the sequence, follows up with photographs highlighting the different spirals seen on pinecones, sunflowers, and pineapples, and includes a picture showing the chambers in a cut-away nautilus shell. The design of the first series of illustrations graphically expresses the Fibonacci sequence by beginning with very small photos and gradually increasing their size in proportion to the numbers in sequence. The book’s intended audience is unclear. The short, simple text on some early pages (“This is a flowering quince. Count the petals.”) will probably put off older readers, while young children may have difficulty even predicting the next number in the sequence, much less understanding the appended “More about Fibonacci Numbers” page. Though the Fibonacci sequence is seldom taught in elementary schools, teachers wanting to introduce it will find the basic ideas here, illustrated with attractive photos. Grades 2-5. --Carolyn Phelan
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More About the Author
Sarah C. Campbell is an author and photo-illustrator who lives in Jackson, Miss. She is the creator of Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator (a 2009 Geisel Honor Book and winner of the Mississippi Library Association's 2010 Youth Author's Award) and Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (selected by the NSTA as a 2011 Outstanding Science Trade Book).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Science made simple,
By Jenny the Librarian (Maine) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Growing Patterns (Hardcover)
Growing Patterns is a rare example of a nonfiction picture book that engages a very young audience. Like Wolfsnail Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator, Sarah Campbell's first picture book, Growing Patterns is a great read aloud book that teaches real science. With beautiful photos and simple text it is appropriate for preschool children through early elementary students. As a children's librarian I find it difficult to find nonfiction books, especially science books, that can hold a a group of young children's attention during story hour. Growing Patterns is a great example of just such a book: it is engaging, substantive and the right length.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inchworm, inchworm. Measuring the marigolds...,
By
This review is from: Growing Patterns (Hardcover)
One of the more interesting requests I receive at my library's reference desk comes from parents seeking math books for their kids. Generally speaking, they don't want math textbooks or worksheets of math problems. No, they want books in a picture book format that incorporate math in some original manner. Now it is fortunate that there are a slew of such books out there. You can find them in any good children's library if you know where to look and with the right teacher or parent, such books can make concepts like fractions or division or subtraction make perfect sense. Fibonacci numbers are a little trickier. Unlike addition or multiplication they are difficult to show to kids as having practical applications in real life. You could discuss how Fibonacci numbers apply to music, but that's still tricky territory. Nature, however, is a natural complement. Kids understand flowers. Kids can understand duplicating numbers. Put the two together and you've the newest picture book format math book to add to your shelves. It does contain a couple difficult concepts, but with the right grown-up by their side, there's very little in "Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature" that a child won't be able to figure out on their own.
Take a look at these flowers and count the petals you see. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight. Notice anything? These petal numbers add on to one another. One plus two equals three. Two plus three equals five. These numbers are called Fibonacci numbers, and what's crazy is that as they go they keep showing up in nature and it's not just in flowers either. If you count spirals on pinecones or sunflowers or pineapples, no matter how you look at them they equal one of these numbers. With brilliant bright photography and simple words, Sarah and Richard Campbell make a math concept understandable. A section on "More About Fibonacci Numbers" and a Glossary of terms appear at the end. It may sound as if this is a fairly simple and straightforward concept, but how do you write an entire book about duplicating numbers found in nature for youngsters? The Campbells have opted for starting out easy and getting slowly more complicated as the book goes on. So at the start the child reader is handed a really easy idea. They look at pictures and count the petals. By the time they get to the eight petals on the cosmos they learn about doubling the numbers and we see the same flowers all over again. Then the numbers get higher. The ideas get harder. It's clear that some adult help may be needed to explain along the way. I suppose the real question here is whether or not kids are gonna get all the concepts the book is throwing out. At the start it's pretty clear but when it starts getting into counting the number of spirals, that's when things begin to get wonky. You have to realize that spirals on pinecones and sunflowers and pineapples can go a variety of different ways. What would be fun is if grown-ups turn it into a game. What if you bought a pineapple and had the kids identify the spirals and then count them? That's pretty cool. Of course then you start getting into the golden spiral concept and that gets kind of complicated. And, of course, if your child attempts to understand The Golden Ratio explanation at the end of the title, sign that kid up for instant math lessons pronto. It makes sense if a grown-up breaks it down, but otherwise this might be information best gleaned by the math-hungry. A six-year-old will be out to sea, but I'd bet there are 10-year-old math whizzes out there that'd get it in a heartbeat. I found myself wishing that the book explained more about the concept of that aforementioned golden spiral, though. In the book you are given a vision of boxes representing the Fibonacci numbers laid out together in a specific pattern. Why they are placed in this pattern is unclear, though, which makes the fact that a single spiral connects them seem a little haphazard. Of course I know that I can't have it both ways, saying the book is too complicated sometimes and then complaining that other sections don't explain enough. Just the same, a sentence or two to explain why these boxes were in this pattern (are they double the size of one another and the only way they fit together is in a rectangle?) would not have been out of place. I did appreciate that the book makes an effort to be a little subtler than a Fibonacci book for children in the past might have been. In the old days a non-fiction title for kids would be more than happy to merrily proclaim that Fibonacci was an Italian fellow who discovered these numbers and published a book on them in 1202, end of story. Ms. Campbell, however, mentions more than once that before Fibonacci was strutting about, these numbers were known in India by a variety of scholars (and she even names them by name). There's also a note at the end of the book that says, "Not all numbers in nature are Fibonacci numbers. A dogwood has 4 petals, and an amaryllis has 6." You'd be forgiven if your natural reaction to this was an outraged, "So what's the point then?" Fortunately, if you read the extra text in the back there's an actual little section there called "Why Fibonacci Numbers?" that says that these numbers show up 90 percent of the time in plants with multiple parts around a single stem. It's not perfect, but it's there. There is no non-fiction subject so interesting that full-color photographs taken post-1990 cannot improve. Would Nic Bishop be the star he is today if he didn't have the power of his lens to work with? The Campbells gave Bishop a run for his money a couple of years ago when they photographed one of the world's more slimy denizens in "Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator". The obvious difference here is that while most of these photographs are taken in nature, just as "Wolfsnail" was, others have been doctored for teaching purposes. The most obvious example is a two-page spread that shows the same pinecone three times but with different digitally darkened spirals in two of the shots. It's a good thing the text says that "All the pictures on these two pages show the same pinecone" because otherwise it would ruin the whole purpose of the shots. Of course all the photos are lovely, but it's nice to also see that they serve to drill home certain points. There's a simply lovely book out this year for the 9-12 year old crowd called "Sugar and Ice" by Kate Messner that touches upon this very subject. In that book the heroine decides to do a school project on Fibonacci numbers in nature. Would that she had "Growing Patterns" to help her along. After all, this book lays down the law of Fibonacci in a fun and informative way. Consider pairing it alongside Joseph D'Agnese's "Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci" for a full Fibonacci-inspired unit. It's math made interesting. Creativity wins the day once again.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Math Comes Alive for Students of All Ages,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Growing Patterns (Hardcover)
My pre-school aged grandchildren enjoy both the colorful pictures and figuring out the math pattern as they look at the pictures and read about the pattern. I am a middle school math teacher and I enjoyed reading the book to my middle school students during our recent unit on number patterns. This is the first "regular" book I've found that fits so well into the math curriculum. The book brings to life what would otherwise have been just another number pattern. This book helps bring math alive in beautiful pictures from nature. Many students don't see the beauty of math and science, and they don't see math in the everyday world. Growing Patterns can help change that. My school librarian and other math colleagues are eager to share this book with their students.
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