Customer Reviews

How Much Is a Million? 20th Anniversary Edition (Reading Rainbow Books)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm currently a college student, majoring in Mathematics.

I clearly remember this book, and the sequel by the same author, as huge parts of my childhood love for the subject. Its clear and innovative style helped spark in me a deep love of mathematics. I still imagine big numbers as fields of stars and lines of kids holding fishbowls.

This is perfect for any child, it gives potentially abstract and boring numbers a proper sense of wonder. I can't reccomend it enough.

I have used this book countless times for teaching new speakers of English our big numbers. It is also wonderful for young gifted children who are able to grasp these concepts perhaps sooner than their age-mates. The most creative use I've heard of came from a teacher who had borrowed my copy but then asked to keep it a little longer because she wanted to be able to give her middle-school students an idea of the enormity of the Holocaust.

Our class liked this book. We thought it was hilarious and gave a wonderful picture of how much a million really is. The kid tower was very imaginative and was an excellent example of a million, billion, and trillion. David M. Schwartz has a fantastic imagination. This book is great for little kids, because it shows there are numbers greater than a hundred. It's language is easy for kids to understand, and it contains many amazing facts.
However, older students dislike it, because it was too fictional. We felt it didn't explain these concepts well enough for us. Overall, we wouldn't recommend it for grades higher than fourth grade.

Children are fascinated by the idea of a million of anything. It's just SO big! This book, with its delightful illustrations and text, makes the idea a little more understandable. I highly recommend this book.

This book should be sent to each person in Congress and the Senate as a valuable re-training tool and to help them understand how much they are condemning our childrens' future with their profligate ways.

This picture book is a great pairing of engaging children's literature, detailed illustrations and a deep math concept. I love the way that Schwartz and Kellogg bring this book to life!
I love Kellogg's illustrating! I would just love to jump right into the pages and be a part of all the action. His characters are drawn with such unique faces. And each page is filled with numerous details and endless nooks and cranies. Each page begs to be explored over and over.
If you have never enjoyed a book illustrated by Steven Kellogg now is the time!
The writing in this particular book is also very well done. The little facts about the number 1 million are really interesting. For instance it would take a fish bowl the size of a city harbor to hold a million goldfish!
This book really helps kids and adults understand a very abstract concept. How many of us really have a good grasp on how much a million really is? This book definitely puts it in perspective!
Read it once and you'll have to read it again and again!

This book gives children many opportunities to visualize something that seems so complicated into something realistic.The authors use of numbers makes it easier to understand the comparison of quantities. The story in itself made me not want to put the book down. I definately recommend this book to people of all ages.

This book is brilliant! For teaching about very large numbers (billions and trillions as well as millions) it is fantastic. Children (and adults) have difficulty imagining just how big these huge numbers are; this book will help thinkers of all ages. I highly recommend it for teachers of children or adults of all ages - I plan to use it with my trainee teachers.

I really enjoyed this book and I like the way David M. Schwartz used kids as an example of measurement. I thought the story was cute and I think young kids will really enjoy this. This is a story that I read a lot when I was in elementary. The story shows a very creative out look on counting and makes a million look like a humongous number. I think kids can really learn from that and even makes it kind of fun to learn. Sometimes I even like to read this book over because it really is a fun book to read. The illustrations are also very good and I think they definitely add to the creativity of this book. I really enjoyed looking at them.

I read this book to my 5th grade class as part of our review of place value. It was very engaging but it went farther than I needed, into the trillions, and that kind of got us off track. This book did a great job of getting my students to picture just how big some qualtities are.