Customer Reviews

Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a wonderful extra for a bright and mathematically-minded kid. It's silly, it's fun, and it hones the logic circuits. It is actually a cleverly disguised introduction to the concept of mathematical variables. Some of the puzzles are complex enough to engage most adults as well.

I thought the book was entertaining, and kept my mind thinking for hours at a time. This book is a great boredom buster!

It was very challenging, and it had wonderful mind-boggling puzzles that kept me working for hours and hours!

As someone who has always been a math person, I loved this book when I was in 4th grade. I was able to do the problems in it and thought it was a fun different approach to learning about math and using logic. I think that this book can be still a fun brain teaser even for adults, as I am one now :). I would say that for many younger Sachar readers this book has a high chance of being over their heads unless they have an adult help them through it, as it has almost an algebraic approach to it. Personally, I think this book is fantastic, but I would not recommend it for anyone looking for just an entertaining story. This is a book of math riddles.

My 10 year-old loves Louis Sachar in general and the Wayside books in particular. After devouring the 3 in the boxed set, he begged for more Wayside School stories. I searched amazon and found this and ordered it and he was so excited when it arrived that he dropped what he was playing and tore upstairs to read it.

He came down in 5 minutes - SO disappointed. He claimed the book 'is not the same'. I took a look and sure enough - it's a book of puzzles. There is no narrative, no story.

Maybe the puzzles are fun - but we were looking for a story. Personally I don't think that the description here made it clear that this is not in fact a story. I wouldn't have ordered this book if I'd realized what it was.

If you're looking for puzzles - go for it. If you're hoping (as we were) for another installment in the Wayside School stories - this is NOT it.

Louis Sachar is at his best. This book is packed with Mathmatical mind benders. And yes EARS + EARS = SWEAR does add up, just do the math Wayside Style. We gave this book to our Mother as a Mother's Day Gift. She is a highschool Math teacher and she loves it.

Louis Sachar has written some pretty great children's books and I read many of them back in elementary school. This was one of them, and is part of the weird Wayside School series, where nothing makes sense if you try to understand it. However, if you don't try, and just sit back and enjoy this book for its weird storytelling, it become a fun experience. In this installment, you're introduced to some pretty weird math, like 'elf + elf = fool'. Wait, what? Well, read this book and find out!

My fourth-grade daughter loved this book. She went through the problems very quickly. Some of them were pretty tricky and confusing in the beginning, but she had fun as she began to learn how to tackle them. We strongly recomend this book to all people who enjoy math, math puzzles and sudoku.

My granddaughter loves all of these author's books. She started reading them at school and ask me to purchase some for her own collection. She is 9 and now has 4 of his books. Get your child reading with this author's work.

Although this book looks like a kid's book, it is really for teenagers and older. It is full of math puzzles, so if you have a bent for figuring out puzzles, don't let the cover and title put you off. It's not really arithmetic -- it's more logic puzzles. I loved this book, and so did my high school aged kids.