Big Numbers

Uses illustrations of exponentially increasing peas to present the concept of numbers from one to a million, billion, trillion.

Grade 1-2-Packard and Murdocca have joined forces to explain and illustrate big numbers to children. The result is a vibrant, oversized book featuring two kids and a dog and cat that always have something to say. Beginning with a single pea on a plate to illustrate "one," the book moves to 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 peas, etc. The green pile continues to grow on the plate, spilling over the tabletop, out the door, across the yard, and, ultimately, into a huge mountain of a quadrillion peas. The visual impact is comical and impressive, clearly conveying the idea of large sums. Additional information, in the form of dialogue balloons and insets, can be confusing, as can the illustrations of fleas, sand, mice, and ladybugs used to emphasize distance and size. Numerical powers of 10 are also introduced and children will quickly understand the relationship between the exponent and the number of zeros. Other complicated ideas are conveyed, such as infinity, some more successfully than others. A fun introduction to an interesting concept.
Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Illustrator Murdocca (Dinosaurs Before Dark, 1992, etc.) adds almost infinite humor to Packard's (author of the ``Choose Your Own Adventure'' series) text. Flap copy tells us that the author is responsible for the focus on ``concrete visualization,'' but it is the cartoony, multi-focus visuals that bring to life the concept of how big really big numbers like a quadrillion are. Recurring characters who will make readers laugh include the brown-spotted white dog, who measures in sniffs. The book itself measures, delightfully, in peas: ``We'll start smallwith the number 1,'' and we see one lone pea on a plate. Add a zero and arrive at ten, which Pete, the boy with the backwards baseball cap, can achieve by holding up five fingers on each hand. The addition of another zero takes readers to 100, and so on until at 100,000, there's a big pile of peas on the table, and the dog asks, ``Where's the beef?'' The pea pile grows exponentially with the addition of each zero; at 10 to the 27th power, the peas make a ball as big as the earth, which looks, from space, like one big pea. And, yes, so many peas would squash down, but ``to keep this book from getting too complicated, we imagined that all the peas stayed the same size.'' This fun, beginning math book tackles a topic that's difficult to grasp and makes it pea-sized. (Nonfiction. 5-9)-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

At just over 9-by-13 inches, this book will be a standout on the math shelves, where its very size will hint at its subject: big numbers. A boy and his dog stare at a pea on a plate, then 10 peas, 100 (a small serving), 1,000 (a plate full), 10,000 (a pan full), and so on up to a million, billion, trillion peas (a ball the size of Earth). Starting with a million, the text introduces exponents. Although the scientific notation is more useful with large numbers, the concept might be more understandable if first explained with 10, 100, and 1,000. Still, this is no textbook but a rollicking, cartoon-style expression of big numbers shown in different ways. Besides the ever-expanding pile of peas, children can imagine a billion mice stretching around the world, ten billion bacteria that "could fit in a pea," and an infinite number of pencils, needed to draw "an infinite number of peas." Bright and sassy, Murdocca's line-and-wash illustrations create an atmosphere of fun that could break through all but the strongest math anxiety. Carolyn Phelan