Customer Reviews

Number Devil

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

 

 

The Number Devil is a fascinating read. It is about a 12 year old boy, Robert, who hates Mathematics. One night, a Number Devil appears in Robert's dream to solve his Math problems. Robert is surprised as he does not have his usual dreams. The Number Devil teaches Robert a lot of Mathematics and a close friendship develops between them.

I liked this book because you feel as if you were Robert himself. Reading the book I remembered the times when I too was struggling to cope with Mathematics. The book contains a bit of humor, fiction and sadness too. The fact that was the coolest was the triangle which the Number Devil and Robert built with numbers and the different triangles with numbers divisible by 2 and 5 in them.

The story is very well interwoven with Mathematics. So it's neither a storybook nor is it a Math textbook. It is very well written. While reading I did not feel at all like keeping the book down. It is very engrossing. It surely is a must-read.

Hans Magnus Enzensburger is a poet, an essayist and novelist. As a young man, he lived next door to Julius Streicher, a big deal in the early Nazi Party. Hans even joined the Hitler Jugend, but they threw him out quickly. He is not well known in America. I was going to do a couple of his more recent books but his devotion to the young, as well as our own poor attention to mathematics lead me instead to begin here.

Hans understands that young children are natural and are naturally scientists. Their early curiosity is capable of latching onto anything put in front of them. The trouble with Mathematics is that arithmetic is shoved at them like drudgery or punishment or over-boiled cabbages. Such is young Robert. His crumby teacher, Mr. Pretzel (Bockel) snarls what should be a teaching lesson into a knot of undercooked revulsion. No wonder Robert hates word problems. No wonder his idea of a secret combination for his lock is: 12345. But words can make light just as easily. Hans does exactly this with his words, and pictures and other useful depictions.

Roberts Devil sticks to 1. 1 is all you need to get clear and exciting insight into numbers. Hans spends seven contiguous pages on 1. Robert's reaction is not cool, rather it is "Cool!"

I suspect any child in a good mood will so engage. You will like a lot of this stuff too. And you do not know all of these things either. I did not know that 1 is the root of infinite arithmetical palindromes. Okay, 1 is only one character. No big palindrome here. But eleven? Okay a little better. But Hans takes you to a level of arithmetic palindrome far above. Try 11 x 11, or 111 x 111. Wow.

Finishing 1, Hans moves on to zero, the downfall of Mayans and Romans alike. He does a brilliant job of showing you that zero must exist. After, he moves straight into exponents with a visual clarity I have never seen in any book. Neither had I seen powers come before division, but this one is a more natural progression. The Devil takes Robert through twelve nights of mathematics with just enough art to keep it going. I will not try to enumerate the rest of the topics, but let me say no page is wasted. His illustrations of the concepts are illuminating, just where they ought to be. You and your kid will both enjoy and grow.