The Grapes of Math: Mind-Stretching Math Riddles

This book is full of rhyming math problems. They deal with grouping and the book is perfect to read to students when they are learning about multiplication and grouping numbers.

The book is about different math problems. The problems are in riddles or poems. It is a great book to engage learning math students. The pictures help the students work the problems out. It gives them a visual representation of the riddle or poem.

This is a great book for introducing math lessons. This book puts math into riddles that studenst love to try and solve.

This would be a great addition to any classroom. I love the rhyming/poetry feel of this book.

This book introduces children to the art of problem solving using engaging math riddles. Children are taught to look beyond the obvious to solve the problems. Briggs teaches children to come up with alternative ways to solve problems rather than just counting individual objects to get the answer.

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This is a great problem solving book. I highly recommend this book for a classroom library. With the vivid pictures and creative riddles, I believe children will really enjoy this book.

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Retelling: This book contains a series of rhyming riddles related to the images it asks you to count. Within the riddles are ways to make the counting easier.

Thoughts and Feelings: I like this book a lot because it focuses on ways to count more efficiently not just on getting the right answer.

What a wonderful book! The Grapes of Math is a compilation of many great brain busters! In this book, there is a riddle on every page that teaches students a trick to solving what would otherwise be such a troubling concept or problem.

Genre: Informational
Media: computer generated
Age: Intermediate, Primary
Review: There are no characters in this book. Also, the problems given show different ways to solve math problems. It provides students a way to think differently about math.

Summary: The author shows readers how to discover and apply the patterns and calculations found in and around nature, and how to calculate them

Genre: Informational

Critique: This book is a good example of an informational text because it provides the reader with information in a relatable way

Media:

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created by computer design

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I was expecting this book to be very simple and geared toward younger grades, but I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading the riddles. I can see these being very helpful in middle school math classes, because each riddle teaches a different strategy for quickly counting a large number of

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items by focusing on how to group them. Students will need to use their reading comprehension skills in conjunction with math skills in order to get the correct answer. These riddles could easily be used for warmup activities in a middle school classroom and could be used for a unit on word problems as well.

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This is a book full of not only brain teasing puzzles, but tips to solve different kinds of problems. This would be wonderful not only for math enrichment, but also for teaching ways to solve math problems more efficiently.

A wonderful book that offers fun math activites

My students enjoy noticing the patterns in this book and counting in groups instead of one by one.

This book is a great example of an Informational Math Book. The book gives fun riddles and visuals that have to do with math problem solving skills to help kids understand ways to solve math problems. It would be best suited for a second or third grade class room. I would suggest the use of this

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book in the classroom to help kids understand math better so that they can succeed.

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This math books helps students solve different math problems in different ways. This book includes pictures and innovative games to read about. It is ideal for students ages 7 and up.

Summary: This book is a book that uses poetry to teach children math. Each page has different puzzles for the children to solve making them think but have fun while doing it

Personal Reaction: I love that this book gets its readers involved so their not just sitting there listening they have to

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think

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. Have the children solve each of the riddles on all the pages
2. This book could also be used when teaching children about poetry.

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Tang created this book to help children who dislike math overcome this fear. The book has cute rhymes and riddles to help create a fun math atmosphere. It helps children to think, but without them knowing they are actually solving math problems.

This book is about Math. It gives problem scenarios and teaches students a quicker way to solve problems. It teaches students to see math problems as patterns.

This is an informational book that centralizes around math puzzles. Through poetry and rhymes, The Grapes of Math, present fun math puzzles to the readers. Each double page includes an illustration and a puzzle for the reader to solve. This book provides fun and different strategies for students to

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solve math riddles with fun, bright, illustrations. The solutions are in the back of the book. I think this book can be used for a lot of different type of students and approaches. This book should not be limited to a math or language arts classroom, but is a good example of a cross curriculum book. It can even be used outside the classroom, for students that are struggling in arithmetic. Grapes of Math provides a fun way to get students who do love math, and those whom struggle with math thinking more creatively or critically. For me as a student in primary school, I always seemed to struggle with math. I did not enjoy it as much as the other learning blocks, and found reading poetry boring and tedious. This book certainly would have quelled these notions, had it been available to me at the time.

I liked the illustrations in this book. The pictures seemed to have a more methodical and generated appearance without hindering the overall appeal. Instead, the patterns were enhanced a bit more, to help facilitate the language.

The language of the book was fun, light and simple. Despite the simplicity of the word choice, words were presented in a new manner (poetry). The simplified language created an easier readability for poetry. An example is:
"It's a picnic! the ants scream.
How many ants are in this scene?
Try to count them one by one,
Before you finish they'll be done.
Find a square before you count--
Soon you'll see the right amount!"

The overall theme of the book is presenting math in new an fun ways.

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In my opinion, this is a neat take on a counting book, and I enjoyed reading it. This is an interactive, informational counting book. For example, the author writes, “It’s a picnic!” the ants all scream. How many ants are in the scene? Try to count them, one by one.” The text and the

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illustrations invite the readers (or listeners) to actively participate in the story, which makes it exceptionally engaging. The language in the book is very simple and the use of rhyming words makes it fun. “Come on, lucky, shiny dice, roll a pair and count it twice. Boxcars, snake eyes, double threes, can you add up all of these? Before you start, please look around, adding’s fast when tens are found.” This quote also demonstrates the quality of the information introduced in this book, as it describes how the author introduces readers to the “making ten” addition strategy. The illustrations in the book are digital, and in my opinion, they are very flat. However, there are a lot of bright, primary colors used which is typically attractive to young readers. The big idea of this story is threefold: (1) to introduce readers to early math concepts, (2) to introduce poetry and rhyme, and (3) to offer an interactive perspective of informational math text.

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I thought this book was extremely unique and engaging. The book is composed of many riddles that involve the reader counting the number of objects on the page. The book starts off with easy riddles and numbers that you can count one by one and then as the book goes on the riddles and counting get

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harder. The book teaches children about grouping things together in bunches instead of counting one by one because it's quicker. The language is easy to understand and the illustrations are great. I love that this book integrates two separate subjects and allows students to use their knowledge of both. The riddles are a little tricky sometimes which is good because it challenges the reader. I really liked this book!

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Simple riddles prompt you to look at a visual counting conundrum in a different way. On your public school math drills, you'll see everything grouped into perfect columns already, but this book will show you groups of things in more random formation, like real life. I was stumped EVERY time (and I

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was an excellent student in math); the answers at the end comprise the lesson/teaching aspect of the book. I learned some really good strategies for practical math applications, but more importantly, I learned that there are different ways of seeing and approaching problems that we "don't have time" to learn in school. I hope my son gets as much out of it as me, and exposing this to him at the right age could be the most important thing I can do for his math education!

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A series of counting riddles challenges children to find short cuts to faster answers. Each problem provides the introduction to a new challenge. The riddles are written in verse and encourage development of pattern recognition, grouping, and multi-step thinking.

This book is about patterns and the many things that contain patterns around us in the world today. For my content area, I am going to rate this book three stars. I like that the book rhymes and grabs the attention of children by using real life examples. However, it is very open ended and can be

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difficult to find the patterns with the information given.

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