New Books: Zero the Hero

Much like the book I last posted about, Zero the Hero (about to be released later this month) is a math-lesson picture book that doesn't feel anything like a lesson, because it actually tells a story. Author Joan Holub and illustrator Tom Lichtenheld (who clearly has a talent for this sort of thing, having also illustrated the similarly clever letter book E-mergency last year) make the titular digit a sympathetic outcast among the other numbers. At first he's looked down upon because he has no effect whatsoever on addition and subtraction—and then he's feared and cast out because he makes the other numbers disappear in multiplication.

But, as tends to happen in these sorts of stories, they soon find they miss the lovable donut-shaped guy—not just because he's amiable, but also because they've completely lost the ability to do important things, like multiply themselves by 10, without him. And that's before they're taken prisoner by a group of suitably martial Roman numerals—at which point Zero comes to the rescue with an ability only he has. (I won't spoil the, um, surprise.)

Golub weaves the math—basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and of course the key concept of zero itself—seamlessly into the storyline, and Lichtenheld's whimsical, cartoon-y art draws kids right in. It's one of those picture books our seven-year-old and our three-year-old like to read together. (And what's more heart-warming than that, especially when the seven-year-old is reading it to the three-year-old?)

It's become a particular favorite of the younger one, and while I can't say how deeply the math lessons are penetrating his brain as he reads the book again and again, the exposure can't hurt. Even at this age, a lesson that doesn't feel like a lesson? Parental nirvana.

[Cover image courtesy of Henry Holt/Christy Ottaviano Books]

New Books: E-mergency

When you talk about letter books, you usually mean ABC books, a genre for very young kids that could probably keep the board-book publishing industry in business all by itself. E-mergency!, however, is a letter book for somewhat older children, with a plot and a lesson beyond the basics of what in the alphabet goes where.

Its premise is that all the letters, from A to Z, live together in a big house. When E trips on the stairs one day and is injured, it's determined that she needs a bit of R&R to recover, so O steps in for her in all her words—with confusing results that will be particularly funny to elementary-school kids with the alphabet firmly under their belts. (Part of the fun—as well as the book's educational point—is that this couldn't have happened to a more important letter, since, as a nifty chart on the book's last page shows, E is by far the most frequently used letter in the English language, as well as many others.)

The book, full of clever wordplay (letter-play?) in multiple asides on every page, is all the more astounding for being the brainchild of 14-year-old Ezra Fields-Meyer, whose was diagnosed with high-functioning autism as a toddler. His short animated video "Alphabet House" (shown below) came to the attention of veteran children's-book illustrator Tom Lichtenheld, who loved the concept and adapted it. The end product does stand out among the work of writers many mulitiples of Fields-Meyer's age—for being better than a good portion of it.





[Cover image courtesy of Chronicle Books]