Dyna-Math! Math Attack by Joan Horton

It was Monday at school and our teacher Miss Glass,
Announced, "Now it's time for arithmetic, class.
Can somebody tell me what's seven times ten?"
She was looking at me when she said it again.

I was thinking so hard all my circuits were loaded.
Then all of a sudden, my brain just exploded.

A temporary attack of dyscalcula causes our heroine a catastrophic overflow in the number processing part of her brain. Numbers spew forth, stampeding her classmates, who dash out of the room to escape the ricocheting digits. The nurse begins her triage with a question about causation.

But every time our heroine repeats the problem which caused the eruption, more numbers flood forth. The police are called, but when she repeats the offending problem to the investigating officer, the renewed cascade of numbers sends the police scampering. Downtown the numbers bounce and stick to everything, driving the dogs to bark exponentially, totalling telephone numbers and setting the town clock bonging madly. Down at the town grocer's, Millie's cash register spouts amounts which change all the prices in the place.

Back at the school, the Channel8 News
Arrived with their TV equipment and crews.
"We're live from the school," the anchorman said.
The camera zoomed in for a view of my head.
"How did this happen?" he asked me. "And when?"
I told him, "It happened on seven times ten."

Just as the National Guard appears, only to run for their lives, the heroine gets the gears turning upstairs, and out pops the product in question from her overheated brain.

70!
"Three cheers!" yelled the crowd. "At last," Miss Glass sighed.
"Ten-four," said the cops. My classmates high-fived.

There are not many picture books out there which can provide a fun introduction to (or respite from) times table drill for the third-grade math class. Joan Horton's Math Attack! is a clever story in rhyme which diagnoses a serious problem of math block, with Kristen Brooker's lively and humorous illustrations which are sure to multiply the laughs from primary math classes all over.

Tutor Tot: Judy Moody Goes to College by Megan McDonald

She, Judy Moody, had to take a note home. A note that said she needed extra help. A note that said she was hazy-not-crazy about math. Fact Of Life: She, Judy Moody was a tutor tot.

Judy Moody is in a mood. Not a good mood. Definitely not a Math-i-tude. Definitely a Bad-i-tude. Judy sees hours of counting beads and gluing macaroni to construction paper in her future. But the prevailing Mom-and-Dad-i-tude is that she will be tutored in math. End of Discussion.

But when her parents take her to the local college campus to meet her new tutor, Chloe Canfield, Judy gets a big surprise. The first tutoring session means playing "The Game of Life" as Chloe, nicknamed "C Squared" for her double-initialed name, points out all the real life uses of math concepts around her. There's not a flash card or macaroni shape in sight, and Judy is swept up in the glamour of her new college friend and her exciting college life. Tutoring sessions in the campus cafe, with lattes and hot chocolate on the side, turn Judy's mood into glad-i-tude, and Judy morphs into a third-grader who dresses and talks with collegiate style.

Spending a trendy Saturday with Chloe, Judy uses Choe's mood nail polish on her toes, eats veggie burgers at the campus canteen, hangs out at the Peace Rally, and makes a striking Warhol-styled pop art bandaid print in Chloe's art class which wins an honorable mention at the college's art show. Oh, and Judy Moody's math-i-tude takes a turn for the better as she gets down with Chloe on the "crucial" concepts.

She, Judy Moody, had a brand-new attitude. It was grat-i-tude.

Megan McDonald's latest in this notable series, Judy Moody Goes to College (Book #8) (Judy Moody), maintains the high level of this beginning chapter series which feature a girl with plenty of attitude who, in her new college vocabulary,* moves from from brat-i-tude right into RAD-i-tude. As Publishers Weekly puts it, "It's hard to imagine an attitude that Judy Moody couldn't improve!"

*Appended is Judy Moody's Not Webster's New World Collegiate Dictionary which defines such collegiate lingo as the bomb, crucial, for your 4-1-1, peace out, peeps, 'rents (parents), and wicked.