Marilyn Burns is a math educator with decades of experience, as well as the author of a handful of incredible children’s books — if you ever see any of them in bookstores or at the library, don’t hesitate, just snap them up.
In my 2022 Spotlight On: Math, I wrote a little about my own math baggage, carried from childhood, and how math readers — along with the idea that you can develop mathematical thinking through children’s books — were a powerful force in shifting my perspective as an adult.
So in many ways, my own answer to the question, what’s a children’s book that changed the way you think?, is more of a genre: children’s books about math.
More specifically, however, is this gem from Marilyn Burns, This Book is About Time — a collection of ways to look at and think about time. It was first published in 1978 and it’s still in print, which should tell you something, not only about the information that it contains, but the way Burns communicates it.
When I first read this book a couple of years ago, it changed the way I think in two ways: first, there was the sheer amount of information I learned, so many things I didn’t know and didn’t even realize I didn’t know. Second, my mind just shifted, much in the same way that, after reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I couldn't look at any part of the natural world in the same way again — this is what happened with time. The facts of it, the philosophy of it, its strange nature — I suddenly saw it all differently, and I couldn’t take it for granted anymore.
What is this children’s book for you?
It could be one you read (or listened to) as a child, teenager, or an adult — doesn’t matter. How did it change the way you think?
Feb 21, 2023·edited Feb 21, 2023Liked by Sarah Miller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because Roald Dahl had a subversive voice that helped me deal with the often awful, scary, and hypocritical behavior I observed around me, especially among adults. Now the very quirkiness that made Dahl's books so real, so honest is about to be excised in the name of a very mealy-mouthed "inclusivity". Kids recognize cruelty and dishonesty. They need to know that someone else does, too. That was a job he was good at.
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle changed me and started my obsession with the idea of traveling through time and space. It is also a story of light and dark, good vs. evil and had a female heroine. I read it in the 5th grade in 1965 against the backdrop of the space race to the Moon. I’m ordering This Book is About Time, thank you, Sarah! ps, I’ve also come back to Alice and Lewis Carroll’s background as a mathematician (I’m learning via the Annotated Alice) is a big part of the seemingly random events that Carroll concocted.
My teacher read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes to us in third grade and I still remember parts of it verbatim. It was a life-changingly painful grappling with the real, human, everyday cost of conflict.
The Phantom Tollbooth was mind-bending to me around the same age - the verbal and conceptual games, the deeper truths, etc. I loved it and it inspired me to examine and "play with" what I saw in the world even as I was just starting to grow out of "playing" in that classic little-kid way, which was so important for me in all the next stages of my life (including this one!).
There was also some horrible late-80s book series about roommates in a high school boarding school (?) - one of them was named Pamela - and although I rarely understood the social dynamics at play, I devoured them when I was about 8 or 9. In one of the books, there was a school dance, and one of the characters had a boyfriend at a neighboring school and so obviously she was going to bring her boyfriend to the dance; her younger sister, who also attended the school, ran into the boyfriend soon after the dance was announced and told him about it and basically invited him to it for her sister, and the sister LOST IT. She, being a high schooler with a boyfriend, clearly wanted to invite him herself; me, being like 8, did not really understand why it was soooooo important for one person to ask over the other. It was a HUGE drama that was basically the whole plot of the book and I remember being weirdly hugely upset by it because from the perspective of the younger sister, she had done this really small thing that she thought was helpful - she had told her sister's boyfriend the date and time of the dance so he could make sure he was free - and her sister was LIVID and I remember going to my mom and actually crying about it. Just how from my zoomed-out narrative perspective it was a simple misunderstanding of good intentions, but it caused all this pain. I remember really being hugely affected by the realization that good intentions aren't enough to make something not hurtful, and just so overwhelmed by the burden of having to not only know my own heart but think about external situational factors in EVERYTHING I DID, to avoid hurting people.
So there you go, even garbage-y books can give you something to mull over!
I just wanted to say that when I was a teacher (and a homeschooling parent), Marilyn Burns was my math hero. Her project books for math were just as good as her literature on it. It was all hands-on and centered on giving kids big, juicy problems to solve. I even got to attend several of her days-long workshops. She totally blew open my thinking of what math could be and I adored her for it.
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Do you know that I also love Braiding Sweetgrass? It's been one of the single most impactful books I've read in my adulthood. Glad we have this in common! As for a book that rocked my childhood -- gosh, there were so many, but The Boxcar Children really stands out, simply because it showed me that not every kid has the support and resources in place that I was lucky enough to have in my own life. This invaluable perspective has served me well.
As a kid, I loved the Little House on the Prairie books. They engaged my imagination. I loved to pretend that I was adventurous Laura Ingalls. It was the first book series I devoured. It also started my love of social studies and history.
I really loved the book "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbitt. It opened my perception to the mysteries of nature, the wondering about immortality - and with it the curiosity about age and what time means. I was fascinated with the idea of a secret wellspring of water that would grant you infinite life - as well as the sadness of witnessing life move through it's cycles while you remain stuck at a certain age forever.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because Roald Dahl had a subversive voice that helped me deal with the often awful, scary, and hypocritical behavior I observed around me, especially among adults. Now the very quirkiness that made Dahl's books so real, so honest is about to be excised in the name of a very mealy-mouthed "inclusivity". Kids recognize cruelty and dishonesty. They need to know that someone else does, too. That was a job he was good at.
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle changed me and started my obsession with the idea of traveling through time and space. It is also a story of light and dark, good vs. evil and had a female heroine. I read it in the 5th grade in 1965 against the backdrop of the space race to the Moon. I’m ordering This Book is About Time, thank you, Sarah! ps, I’ve also come back to Alice and Lewis Carroll’s background as a mathematician (I’m learning via the Annotated Alice) is a big part of the seemingly random events that Carroll concocted.
My teacher read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes to us in third grade and I still remember parts of it verbatim. It was a life-changingly painful grappling with the real, human, everyday cost of conflict.
The Phantom Tollbooth was mind-bending to me around the same age - the verbal and conceptual games, the deeper truths, etc. I loved it and it inspired me to examine and "play with" what I saw in the world even as I was just starting to grow out of "playing" in that classic little-kid way, which was so important for me in all the next stages of my life (including this one!).
There was also some horrible late-80s book series about roommates in a high school boarding school (?) - one of them was named Pamela - and although I rarely understood the social dynamics at play, I devoured them when I was about 8 or 9. In one of the books, there was a school dance, and one of the characters had a boyfriend at a neighboring school and so obviously she was going to bring her boyfriend to the dance; her younger sister, who also attended the school, ran into the boyfriend soon after the dance was announced and told him about it and basically invited him to it for her sister, and the sister LOST IT. She, being a high schooler with a boyfriend, clearly wanted to invite him herself; me, being like 8, did not really understand why it was soooooo important for one person to ask over the other. It was a HUGE drama that was basically the whole plot of the book and I remember being weirdly hugely upset by it because from the perspective of the younger sister, she had done this really small thing that she thought was helpful - she had told her sister's boyfriend the date and time of the dance so he could make sure he was free - and her sister was LIVID and I remember going to my mom and actually crying about it. Just how from my zoomed-out narrative perspective it was a simple misunderstanding of good intentions, but it caused all this pain. I remember really being hugely affected by the realization that good intentions aren't enough to make something not hurtful, and just so overwhelmed by the burden of having to not only know my own heart but think about external situational factors in EVERYTHING I DID, to avoid hurting people.
So there you go, even garbage-y books can give you something to mull over!
Matilda, by Roald Dahl, always and forever. And very honorable mentions to Judy Blume's books.
I just wanted to say that when I was a teacher (and a homeschooling parent), Marilyn Burns was my math hero. Her project books for math were just as good as her literature on it. It was all hands-on and centered on giving kids big, juicy problems to solve. I even got to attend several of her days-long workshops. She totally blew open my thinking of what math could be and I adored her for it.
Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" for sure! :)
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Do you know that I also love Braiding Sweetgrass? It's been one of the single most impactful books I've read in my adulthood. Glad we have this in common! As for a book that rocked my childhood -- gosh, there were so many, but The Boxcar Children really stands out, simply because it showed me that not every kid has the support and resources in place that I was lucky enough to have in my own life. This invaluable perspective has served me well.
As a kid, I loved the Little House on the Prairie books. They engaged my imagination. I loved to pretend that I was adventurous Laura Ingalls. It was the first book series I devoured. It also started my love of social studies and history.
I really loved the book "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbitt. It opened my perception to the mysteries of nature, the wondering about immortality - and with it the curiosity about age and what time means. I was fascinated with the idea of a secret wellspring of water that would grant you infinite life - as well as the sadness of witnessing life move through it's cycles while you remain stuck at a certain age forever.