Multiplication

Children's Literature - Deborah Steinig

When a boy named Kim bakes with his mother, they decide to triple the recipe. Kim's mother explains that this is a multiplication problem, and she shows him how to multiply by either skip-counting or repeated addition. Unfortunately, the storyline is too thin to capture the reader's interest. The book also attempts to teach too much material at once. It begins with a basic introduction to multiplication which would be appropriate for first- or second-graders. Just a few pages later, it jumps into arrays, factors and products, which are abstract terms appropriate for third- or fourth-graders who already have a solid handle on basic multiplication concepts. To the book's credit, it attempts to explain why multiplication is commutative (that is, why 3x5 is the same as 5x3), a fact that students are often asked to accept on faith. The illustrations are confusingly inconsistent, though, sometimes showing the rows as the groups to be counted and, at other times, the columns. The illustrations also make a point of racial diversity. However, the African-American boy on the cover and the Caucasian boy on the title page have no connection to Kim, the Asian-American boy in the story. (Strikingly, with all this attention to diversity, the publishers didn't think to include a girl.) Perhaps this book would interest a parent who felt ill-equipped to help with math homework. A competent teacher could present the material more effectively and engagingly with actual physical objects than with the illustrations in this book. For stronger multiplication-literature connections, try Leaping Lizards by Stuart Murphy or 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental. Reviewer: Deborah Steinig