Welcome to Suzanne’s Picks. Suzanne is the founder and owner of Gulliver’s and has a great eye for good literature. Bookmark this page to keep up to date on Suzanne’s favourites, and visit Gulliver’s to pick up the book she features.

This month’s selections:

Mathematical Books for Children

As a professor of mathematics I am often asked by parents what books I would recommend to help their children get a head start in math. The parent is often expecting me to suggest some sort of exercise workbook.

That would be entirely the wrong approach. I recommend two of my favourite books to introduce children to the beauty and elegance of mathematics. Both books are written at such a level as to be accessible to the child and interesting to the adult. Even as someone who makes his living with mathematics reading such a book to a child always reveals a new truth about classic theorems. Reading the book with the child is perhaps the most important point. Thrusting a math workbook under a child's nose and walking away does more damage than no book at all. All you have communicated is that math is a chore and you won't stick around to help with its unpleasantness. Thus both these engaging books should be read with the child at least for the first time through.

Reading a mathematic children's book to your child has several advantages over a typical story book. The child is aware that the topic holds your interest and thus must be important. A love of math and learning can thus be fostered through example. Many regular children's books are cute the first time through for the adult and then boring followed by tedious. With a mathematical child's book both parent and child will learn something new with each reading.

Dr. Bernard Brooks
Assistant Head, Research Programs
School of Mathematical Sciences
Rochester Institute of Technology

The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

It is a cross between Alice and Wonderland and a discrete mathematics textbook. The Number Devil teaches truths and proofs though the dreams of a boy who begins the adventure disliking math, meets the number devil, Teplotaxl, and learns that mathematics is powerful and magnificent and accessible to him. The illustrations are colourful and best of all the mathematics is explained using non standard terminology so that the ideas and concepts stand out unsullied by previous prejudices. The standard terms are noted at the end so that the connection can be made. The book includes Fibonacci, Bertrand Russell and Gauss as a few of its characters. The story manages to link Cantor dust, combinatorics, geometric series, Pascal's triangle and both countable and uncountable infinity. If some of those terms seem unfamiliar to the adult reader then both child and parent will learn as you read a chapter a night.


Go Figure! By J. Ball

This is a great and colourful book that does not have to be read in order. You can jump to the section on the Golden Ratio and then back to learn about Mayan and Roman numbers. It is illustrated in the style common to the DK publisher with bright clear photographs in a collage with short self-contained paragraphs explaining them. While it is recommended that parent and child read together, of the two books this one is more accessible to the child on their own. Go Figure! Doesn't link everything with a story so it is free to include plenty of fun tidbits such as why your phone number can be found in the digits of Pi.
This book also has more of the history of mathematics explicitly told whereas in The Number Devil the history is there but in a very subtle presentation. Adults will find the sections on probability most enlightening because people seem to possess a very erroneous view of chance.