Mathematickles! Book

Mathematickles! by Betsy Fanco and Steven Salerno combines mathematic lingo and seasonal references into one book of silly poetry. The illustrations are bright and colorful, drawing in young readers. After reading the first few pages with addition poetry such as "holes + nuts - nuts = squirrel hide and seek", I thought that my first graders would love reading this book. But I quickly realized that most of the mathematic operations and lingo would cause the poetry to go well above their heads. The book included mathematical topics such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and graphing. I do think that this book would be great for upper elementary students more familiar with the math behind the poems. Without that background knowledge, the cutesy jokes about the seasons would be missed.

As an adult reader, I really enjoyed reading the collection of poems and figuring out the math/poetry puzzles. I thought it was really creative to combine the two in a way that neither makes sense without understanding the other.

I could see this book being used to show the originality of poetry for students upper elementary and later.