You Can, Toucan, Math: Word Problem-Solving Fun [Library Binding]

David A. Adler (Author), Edward Miller (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

So long, boring worksheets! Math can be fun—it's not just for the birds. This book introduces kids to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in a fun and unthreatening fashion. These math riddles encourage young readers to think through math problems as they study both the amusing verse and pictures. Kids will hardly notice how much they're learning about the basic math operations. Solutions and tables are provided.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-4–From Crows in Rows to Obese Geese, this title presents a flock of bird-themed rhyming word problems. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division tables conveniently cover the endpapers, and a brief introduction to each mathematical function is provided on the first spread. Miller's festive, computer-generated illustrations give the book a retro look and jazz up the sometimes-forced, occasionally bland rhymes. The word problems are also somewhat repetitive. While this book is undoubtedly more enticing than worksheets, other titles do more to inspire and teach children. Jon Scieszka's Math Curse (Viking, 1995), for example, is a much better choice for making math fun and stretching kids' critical-thinking skills, while Greg Tang's The Grapes of Math (Scholastic, 2001) seamlessly embeds problem-solving strategies right into the (much more fluid and funny) rhymes. Still, Adler's offering is a suitable addition to collections in need of another math picture book.–Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 1-3. Nineteen kinds of birds are featured in this collection of beginning word problems in verse. Adler's 20 "number riddles" challenge readers to decide whether to use addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division to find the answer. Luckily for younger kids, many of the answers can be determined by simply counting the birds in the colorful pictures. A typical riddle goes: "Scissor-tailed flycatchers / sitting in trees. / "Scissor-tailed flycatchers / sitting in threes. / Three to a tree. / Five trees in all. / How many scissor-tailed flycatchers / sitting in trees?" In small type and upside-down, a sentence below the text on each page tells the process for finding the answer and gives the answer itself. With serviceable verse and attractive computer-assisted illustrations, this will be useful for parents and teachers who want to introduce techniques for solving word problems. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Library Binding: 24 pages
• Publisher: Holiday House (September 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823419193
• ISBN-13: 978-0823419197
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #411,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I write both fiction and non-fiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later. Of course, since I'll be spending a lot of time with each main character, why not have him or her be someone I like? Andy Russell is based, loosely, on a beloved member of my family. He's fun to write about and the boy who inspired the character is even more fun to know. Cam Jansen is based even more loosely on a classmate of mine in the first grade whom we all envied because we thought he had a photographic memory. Now, especially when my children remind me of some promise they said I made, I really envy Cam's amazing memory. I have really enjoyed writing about Cam Jansen and her many adventures. For my books of non-fiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. My first biography was Our Golda: The Life of Golda Meir. To research that book, I bought a 1905 set of encyclopedia. Those books told me what each of the places Golda Meir lived in were like when she lived there. I've written many other biographies, including books about Martin Luther King, Jr; George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; Helen Keller; Harriet Tubman; Anne Frank; and many others in my Picture Book Biography series. I've been a Yankee and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades so I wrote Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man. It's more the story of his great courage than his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig. I am working now on another book about a courageous man, Janusz Korczak. My book One Yellow Daffodil is fiction, too, but it's based on scores of interviews I did with Holocaust survivors for my books We Remember the Holocaust, Child of the Warsaw Ghetto, The Number on My Grandfather's Arm, and Hiding from the Nazis. The stories I heard were compelling. One Yellow Daffodil is both a look to the past and to the future, and expresses my belief in the great spirit and strength of our children. I love math and was a math teacher for many years, so it was fun for me to write several math books including Fraction Fun, Calculator Riddles, and Shape Up! Fun with Triangles and Other Polygons. In my office I have this sign, "Don't Think. Just Write!" and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, even each sentence or paragraph. For me stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times. And I work with my editors. I look forward to their suggestions, their help in the almost endless rewrite process. Well, it's time to get back to dreaming, and to writing, my dream of a job. David A. Adler is the author of more than 175 children's books, including the Young Cam Jansen series. He lives in Woodmere, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great math activity for the elementary classroom and beyond, March 4, 2011

By 

Lonnie Jones "ladyhef" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Can, Toucan, Math: Word Problem-Solving Fun (Paperback)

I teach and tutor third through fifth grade. This book was a great problem solving activity in my small group instruction. I covered the "answers" on each page with post it tape, gave each student a white board/marker, and read each page that has a wonderful bird math problem solving question on it written in pose. I asked the students to write the math problem (+, -, X, div) that would solve the query from each poem on their boards, and then we discussed our answers. The students loved it. I then had each student choose one page, illustrate it and copy the poem for a bulletin board which I named "Birds + Spring = Great Math Problems". I also hung a beautiful bird quilt that my students had made on a previous year. Great book, great springboard for all kinds of math instruction. But I also think it would be a great book to cuddle up with at home, one on one with your own favorite little student.