Could You Lift Up Your Bottom? Archives -

A Roundup of TanTan Publishing Math Concepts Picture Books

April 4, 2016
goodreadswithronna
Ages 4-8, Children's Book Reviews, Juvenile Fiction, Math & Counting, STEM

A ROUNDUP OF TANTAN PUBLISHING
MATH CONCEPTS PICTURE BOOKS
featuring:

Could You Lift Up Your Bottom?,
Math at the Art Museum, and Ruffer’s Birthday Party

The first book in my roundup is called Could You Lift Up Your Bottom? by Hee-jung Chang with illustrations by Sung-hwa Chung. (TanTan Publishing; $16.95)
This book piqued my interest with its funny title, so I chose to make it my first read of the three math stories books I received. It has a relatively simple story of a frog whose hat has blown away and an elephant who sits on it. Stubborn and greedy Elephant will not move one inch, demanding different shaped food to eat. Frog fulfills the elephant’s requests in hopes that Elephant will lift up his bottom and get off of the hat. Love it! Eventually Frog is able to get Elephant to eat part of a honeycomb in a beehive. He then runs off due to the bees going after him. Could You Lift Up Your Bottom? reminded me a bit of Jon Klassen’s, I Want My Hat Back but teaching shapes along the way. The illustrations are unique and should appeal to kids because they can duplicate the simplistic art style. This book would be a good one to borrow from a library or have in a classroom. It has some nice information and suggested activities in the back of the book as well.

Understanding math concepts
Shape and space
Explaining the basic concept of space and three types of plane figures: triangle, quadrangle (tetragon), circle

Next, I read Math at the Art Museum by Group Majoongmul and illustrated by Yun-ju Kim. (TanTan Publishing; $16.95)
This picture book is about a boy visiting an art museum with his family. The museum is having a special “Discover Math in Art” exhibit. Numerals, colors, shapes, direction, perspective, symmetry, and time are discussed as the family looks at different paintings from Seurat, Picasso, Degas, and more. I found this to be an enjoyable read that would engage children 4-9. In addition to liking the story, kids would like looking at the artwork presented in the book. Again, the publisher gave information in the back matter with suggestions for activities, but my favorite part was this quote, “Because math is not a field that deals only with numbers and calculations, it’s important to encourage children to look for and learn from mathematical concepts in unexpected places, including in artwork.” I wholeheartedly agree–we should be showing children that math is all around us and isn’t just a stand alone subject to be shared only in school. I’m happy to discover these kid-oriented math stories that strive to make math concepts accessible to all.

Understanding math concepts
Patterns and problem solving
Introducing mathematical concepts that are found in our surroundings to give children a fresh perspective on math: math in art

My final read from this group of books was Ruffer’s Birthday Party by Soon-jae Shin and illustrated by Min-jung Kim. The concepts emphasized are addition and subtraction, but a lot of other math concepts were shown in this book! I know kids will love it with the hands-on math examples. Ruffer is Nora’s pet dog and it’s his birthday in four days. They make invitations (to three friends and their pets–which they have to add up since they want to give an invitation to each of them), count down to the birthday party, bake a special cake (and since they are short on eggs they have to buy more at the store), they go to the store for last minute items (and there is a sale so we have to figure out the full price minus the discount and eventually figure out the total of the sale). Then, at the party Ruffer gets presents (and makes a chart to organize them–bones, stuffed animals, and balls) and everyone plays a ring toss game (in two teams with a few simple rules). It’s a fun read for kids who already love birthday books too!