Up to My Knees!

(Board book)

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Description

Caldecott Honor winner Grace Lin celebrates math for every kid, everywhere! Caldecott Honor winner Grace Lin celebrates math for every kid, everywhere! Mei explores measurement as she plants a sunflower seed and watches it grow. The plant starts off as tall as her toe, but soon it's up to her knees, then her waist, then her shoulders. How tall will it get Storytelling Math celebrates children using math in their daily adventures as they play, build, and discover the world around them. Joyful stories and hands-on activities make it easy for kids and their grown-ups to explore everyday math together. Developed in collaboration with math experts at STEM education nonprofit TERC, under a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Reviews

In board book form, Lin accomplishes that most difficult of tasks: creating engaging, accessible, age-level-appropriate, not-too-fussily illustrated stories that also teach something. In this case its math. Each entry homes in on a specific mathematical concept, while together providing a tour through the seasons and a slice-of-life portrait of three friends, Olivia, Mei, and Manny. In the springtime-set Knees, Mei observes measurement and comparison as she cultivates a sunflower. Circle! Sphere! proves the mind-stretching fact that the childrens three different-shaped bubble wands produce the same-shaped bubble. Fits setting is a fall farmers market and illustrates Olivias spatial sense (and taste in produce). Wintry Marshmallow touches on division, both mathematical (how to split three marshmallows between two girls) and behavioral (without ruining the friendship). The illustrations are signature Lin think The Ugly Vegetables (rev. 9/99) and the Ling and Ting books with bold, saturated hues; thick black outlines; judicious use of frames; eye-pleasingly tidy details; and nothing extraneous. Brief Exploring the Math notes and Try This! suggestions, addressed to adults and written by an early math expert, are appended. All together, these diminutive math storybooks add up to a whole lot of fun.
The Horn Book, starred review

Author Bio

Grace Lin is the author and illustrator of more than twenty books for children, including the Newbery Honor Book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Little, Brown), the Geisel Honor Book Ling and Ting- Not Exactly the Same! (Little, Brown), and The Ugly Vegetables. She is also the co-author and illustrator of Our Seasons. She lives in Florence, Massachusetts.