What Is Math?

This “delightful first look at STEM” is a lively celebration of math and all the ways it applies to everyday life, featuring fun math activities for kids (School Library Journal). 

What is math? So many things! Counting and calendars, weights and fractions, shapes and distances, charting and graphing. Math is the way we measure and code our world, from seasons to clocks, recipes, classrooms, and beyond. Math is all around us!    

Readers will be introduced to:
– Graphs and charts—in the form of pizza pies! 
– Counting and weight—when baking a cake!  
– Shapes and word problems—to build a spaceship!    

This rousing read aloud offers an engaging and accessible introduction to math—perfect for sparking an early interest in STEM subjects for preschool and early elementary school children. And be sure to keep an eye out for a friendly black cat and white dog on each spread as they participate in the math-related hijinks!

An NSTA-CBC 2023 Best STEM Book of the Year

"A great way to show even the math-averse or math-phobic the many ways that math is hiding in their everyday lives." —Kirkus Reviews

Rebecca Kai Dotlich is a poet and the author of many award-winning picture books for young readers, including Race Car Count; What Can a Crane Pick Up?; One Day, The End; and What Is Science?, which was a Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year and a finalist in the Children’s Science Picture Book category of the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books. She loves grouping her vintage marble collection into cupcake tins. But not to worry—she never bakes them. She lives in Indiana.

Sachiko Yoshikawa grew up in Tokyo, where her parents ran a salon. Her mother was a stylist, while her father kept track of the financials, often with an abacus. It was on the abacus that Sachiko learned to add and subtract. She still uses a mental image of her father’s abacus when solving simple math problems. Sachiko is the illustrator of Beach Is to Fun as well as What Is Science? She lives in California with her family.