Making Graphs

February 15, 2015
Grades 1-3 Each of these new books in the Math World series walks readers through a basic math concept via a fictional story that makes the process feel less like work. Explanations are built into the dialogue, and the characters and scenarios in the stories, set either at home or in a school classroom, are realistic and relatable. In Making Graphs, students conduct surveys about sports, ice cream, and lunch preferences and then display their results in different kinds of graphs. The stories typically end on an upbeat note, with a silly joke or clever ending. Longhi's illustrations, focusing on ethnically diverse characters, add great charm to the series. However, the large amount of dialogue and the number of characters in each book distract somewhat from the math concepts themselves. The presentation of these concepts is perhaps not clear enough for a first introduction, although these appealing books are still great for review.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)