November 1, 2014
Gr 4-8-Jocular titles and rhyming text aside, these slim volumes each provide short, straightforward definitions, explanations, and plentiful demonstration problems set in large print numerals. Photographs and small pictorial elements are used judiciously on pages focused on the mathematical processes. The author favors the mathematical properties-associative, commutative, distributive, identity, and others-used in addition and multiplication. Demonstrated in Magical Mathematical Properties, these properties also appear in other volumes and seem to vary in their usefulness. There's some overlap and duplication among the books, and a few-especially Statistics-suffer from brevity and density of ideas. Rhyming text, used here and there throughout, sometimes adds a light note but other times detracts from otherwise clear explanations. This series offers useful introduction and review of basic arithmetic operations, decimals, fractions, and a bit of algebra and geometry, though quality varies from book to book.
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