Ten Titles on Tuesday: 3/23/21

Good morning.

I never, ever schedule posts of any kind but today is an exception, because as you receive this, I am heading an hour south (I have recently learned that referring to distance by the time it takes to travel there is a Midwestern thing — is this true?) to receive my first dose of COVID vaccine. I’m excited and emotional — two feelings I never thought I’d experience re: a shot. Life is weird (and wondrous).

This week’s Ten Titles, never in any particular order:

1. Numbers in Motion: Sophie Kowalevski, Queen of Mathematics by Laurie Wallmark

2. Starcrossed by Julia Denos

3. The Kingfisher Treasury of Stories for Seven-Year-Olds compiled by Edward and Nancy Blishen

4. Cherry Blossom and Paper Planes by Jef Aerts

5. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Gerda Muller

6. Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

7. Shy Willow by Cat Min

8. Moses Goes to the Circus by Isaac Millman

9. The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas by Maria Garcia Esperon

10. The Robber Hotzenplotz by Otfried Preussler (I love anything from the NYRB Children’s Collection but I would walk five miles to get this book based solely on my library system’s summary: “When a robber steals his grandmother’s musical coffee mill, Kasperl and his best friend Seppel try to catch the robber, who enlists the help of his wicked magician friend, Petrosilius Zackleman, a gluttonous villain with a weakness for fried potatoes.”)

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Did you know there are literary prizes for math books? I did not. The Mathical Book Prize (a partnership between research folks and teachers) is intended to recognize titles (fiction and nonfiction, grades PreK-12) that inspire a love of math in the world around us. I love their PDF booklist, which not only breaks down award-winners by age range but includes honor titles as well. Shout out to both Baby Goes to Market by Atinuke and Billions of Bricks by Kurt Cyrus, both of which I reviewed in my Spotlight On: Counting Books last July. Mathical also calls Hippos Go Berserk! by Sandra Boynton a Hall of Fame title — I’ve been sitting here repeating to myself from memory, “All through the hippo night, hippos play with great delight. But at the hippo break of day, the hippos all must go away,” because instead of music earworms, I get them from the board books I read 10,000 times. (Truth: sometimes I miss them.)

Read good books and take good care 😘