You Can Count on Monsters: The First 100 Numbers and Their Characters [Paperback]

Richard Evan Schwartz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2010 | Age Range: 8 and up

Using a unique teaching tool designed to motivate kids to learn, this volume visually explores the concepts of factoring and the role of prime and composite numbers. The playful and colorful monsters are designed to give children (and even older audiences) an intuitive understanding of the building blocks of numbers and the basics of multiplication. The introduction and appendices can also help adult readers answer questions about factoring from their young audience. The artwork is crisp and creative and the colors are bright and engaging, making this volume a welcome deviation from standard math texts.

CRC Press Author and NPR's Math Guy Keith Devlin spoke with Scott Simon about how the book makes finding prime numbers fun.

"This is one of the most amazing math books for kids I have ever seen…," Devlin says. "Great colors, it's wonderful, and yet because [Schwartz] knows the mathematics, he very skillfully and subtly embeds mathematical ideas into the drawings."

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4–8—This hybrid math/art book is both ambitious and imaginative. An introductory section explains the colored-dot configurations and factor trees for numbers 1 to 100, which appear on the verso of each spread. These factor trees are "all the way grown out" to the lowest common factors, or prime numbers. On the opposite page is a monster scene that represents the number. Schwartz has created a creature for each prime number: "Each monster has something about it that relates to its number, but sometimes you have to look hard (and count) to find it." Thus, the monster for 5 is a five-featured, five-pointed star, and the 13 monster sports a pink-and-white eye-patch with 13 segments. The illustration for 14 is a "7" monster eating a "2" monster. The "78" picture includes monsters representing 2, 3, and 13, the prime factors of that number. The pages are glossy black with flat, colorful abstractions. The author's claim, "The only thing you really need to know in order to enjoy this book is how to multiply whole numbers together, like 2 and 3," is an understatement; readers will need patience and an open, undaunted mind to deconstruct the monster scenes. This is a book for math lovers who want to have some fun. Challenge these students to create their own prime monsters and combinations. While the dot configurations and factor trees are less inventive, they provide a more concrete explanation of the math for the rest of us.—Barbara Auerbach, PS 217, Brooklyn, New York
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

This delightful book is the result of the author's desire to teach his daughters about primes and factorization. Apart from an introduction and some explanatory material in the back, it consists of one hundred double pages: on the left page is a number and that many dots, arranged into clusters that display its factorization. On the right page is a picture that represents the same information using the author's 'monsters,' which represent the prime numbers. --MAA



This compact, innovative book counts to 100 using prime numbers represented as monsters, each with identifying characteristics (two resembles a bee with two buggy eyes, and three is an angry-looking triangular creature). The book opens with explanations of multiplication, prime and composite numbers, and factor trees, then moves on to a list of numbers. Each prime number looks unique, while composite numbers are represented by scenes involving their prime monsters (eight is illustrated as three of the beelike twos, i.e., two times two times two. Readers may have difficulty deciphering the pictures, which come to resemble little works of abstract geometric art. But especially for creative learners, visualizing the roles each monster plays may lead to deeper number sense. Ages 4 to 8. --Publishers Weekly

My eight-year old granddaughter Natalie is just learning about multiplication and as we read through almost the whole book, she especially liked the 'special numbers' (primes) where a new shape appeared. At one point she paused and said, 'You never get two special numbers one right after the other.' I gave positive reinforcement for this, her first mathematical conjecture (not mentioning the one counterexample of 2 and 3). She's going to take the book to her second grade class. Every school library should have one. --Thomas Banchoff, former MAA President

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press (January 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568815786
• ISBN-13: 978-1568815787
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 0.7 x 7.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 91 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!! May 27, 2010

By A. Phillips

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

After reading the reviews and the sneak peaks here on Amazon, I was expecting a great book from Mr. Schwartz. What I did not expect however, was how absolutely brilliant it was going to be! What Schwartz does with the monsters to teach about prime numbers is both beautiful and ingenious.

I homeschool 3 boys of primary school age. Our oldest son is autistic and has an extreme aversion to math. Our second son is the complete opposite, devouring anything and everything numeric. He's followed by our youngest who needs a thrill to sit still. All of my boys LOVE this book! My oldest (who is *the one* who would benefit the most from reading it) shied away from it at first. He's a bright boy and knew all too fast that the book was teaching math, a subject in which he struggles so much with. Well, after listening and watching me read this book, and seeing both his mother and his younger brothers having so much fun as we all "played" along, he had to come over and join in. He loves it! My two younger boys are quite obsessed with it. I have to give them turns with it!.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a struggling learner/special needs child. With all of its benefits academically, I would (and will) buy the book for adults as well, if not just for the art work! It's amazing (and clever!) how Mr. Schwartz brings to life these numbers! As an adult who's also had an extreme aversion to math (my entire life) I can honestly say that Mr. Schwartz is the first person to claim that math can be fun, and then went on to prove it to me! What's more, is that he proved it to my child(ren)!

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars scared of math March 22, 2010

By Em Byrd

Format:Paperback

These monsters will not scare you away from math but help you to embrace it. Wonderful book to teach anyone about primes, multiplication, factors and factor trees, factorials and introduce a proof to you using factorials to show that primes and thus numbers go on forever. Love the monsters ... love the book.

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun and accessible introduction to real math February 23, 2010

By Math Mom

Format:Paperback

This is a great way to introduce kids to prime numbers, in a fun and enjoyable way. I had a great time figuring out the pictures with my kids, with my 5 year old figuring out how to multiply after a going through a few monsters. I used it in a class of 7 and 8 year olds to teach them about prime numbers and they've been discussing the prime monsters ever since.