Toads and Tessellations (Charlesbridge Math Adventures) - Softcover

Morrisette, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580893554 ISBN 13: 9781580893558

Publisher: Charlesbridge, 2012

Synopsis

Enzo is the son of a great magician, however unlike his father, his spells create chaos instead of order. What really interests Enzo, more than books about magic, are books by and about the lives of famous physicists and astronomers like Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler. Enzo dreams not of becoming a magician, but a mathematician instead. When Tessel, the village shoemaker, is called upon to make twelve identical shoes out of only one piece of leather, Aida, the shoemaker’s sister, goes to Enzo’s father for some magic to help her brother. With Enzo’s father out of town at a magic convention, it’s up to Enzo to help Aida and Tessel out of their predicament. A spell snafu leads Enzo and Aida to a method of forming patterns without gaps or overlaps, and they discover that math, not magic, may be the answer to their problem. Sharon Morisette’s accessible text introduces readers to the concept of tessellations, while Philomena O’Neill’s illustrations offer a clear visual to what tiling is—children will enjoy finding the tessellations hidden throughout the images. Back matter includes a glossary and notes about tessellations, Galileo, and Kepler.

About this title

About the Author

Sharon Morrisette has written on subjects from jet engines to semiconductor chips. TOADS AND TESSELLATIONS is her first children’s book. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Reviews

Gr 3-5-Studying tessellations requires the energy of play and the focus of problem-solving, a wonderful subject for a story full of inspiration and blundering. Enzo is a magician's apprentice in late medieval Italy. His true passion is for the new ideas of mathematicians like Galileo and Kepler. As far as spell casting, he is no Strega Nona like his father. When the castle's housekeeper, renowned for her cruelty, requests 12 pairs of shoes to be made from one piece of fine leather for the 12 dancing princesses, the shoemaker Tessel comes running for Enzo's father, the local mago. He is away, so Enzo has to fill his shoes. He finds that using magic does not help when he inadvertently turns the shoemaker into a toad. Giving up on magic, he decides to take apart Tessel's shoe with Aida, the shoemaker's daughter. Once he turns to mathematics for inspiration, he and Aida begin to simplify the shapes, flip them, turn them, slide, and rotate them. They create a perigon of triangles and before long (and with a few laughs), they use tessellations successfully to meet the housekeeper's challenge. The illustrated glossary and notes in the back matter explain the mathematics, history, and current use of tessellations. The watercolor illustrations clearly and astutely express the necessary concepts, both mathematical and historical. There is even some fun embedded in them: 26 hidden tessellations for Where's Waldo fans.-Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School, New York Cityα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Enzo studied magic books, as his papa asked. But in secret he read others, as well: books by great astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists. “Oh, to someday be a grande matematico, like Galileo Galilei or Johannes Kepler,” he dreamed, as he watched the stars wheel through the sky.

Edition details

• Publisher: Charlesbridge
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580893554
• ISBN 13: 9781580893558
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: O'Neill Philomena
• Number of pages: 32