Numbering the Days: Counting on Fall by Lizann Flatt

WHAT IF NATURE KNEW NUMBERS LIKE YOU?

LET'S LOOK AT THE FALL.
CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT COUNTING COULD DO?

Who'd count the leaves
falling from trees,
stirred and disturbed,
by the passing breeze?

The turning of the season tells us it's time to turn to those autumn concept books that teach temperate-zone kids what the turning of time means in nature. They can count on change in the air and in the earth around them, in Lizann Flatt's forthcoming Counting on Fall (Math in Nature) (Owlkids Books, 2012).

If honk-honking geese
kept to groups of ten apiece,
what a sight that would make
At the lake!

[Can you see several ways to make up ten?
Can you think of other ways to make ten?]

Flatt's loose, easy-rhyming text encourages kids to count, not just from one to ten, but by sets of twos or fives or tens, both ways, up and down.

With toes like those
do you suppose
raccoons can count on trouble?

[Can you count the toes by fives?]

Ashley Barron's stylized torn-paper collages in subtle autumnal shades work well, for the most part, imparting a comfortable mellow mood to the scenes of fall plants and animals as black bears gobble up berries and squirrels tote up their acorns by fives, although a few darkish illustrations require some close-up scrutiny. A two-page spread of ready-for-hibernation brown bats features both hanging bats wide awake and some soundly asleep to tote up. Other double spreads offer glowingly charming composition, such as appealing pikas gathering flowers for their burrow storehouses, or a stand-out spread of Canada geese which deftly makes use of perspective to teach the tens concept.

Flatt's text offers math concepts that span the primary grades, from simple preschool counting to estimation and multiple sets of twos and fives and tens, making this book a worthy addition to the number of counting and seasonal books among the primary bookshelves. Text boxes within each double-page spread extend the activity with higher level and open-ended questions. and an appended "Nature Notes" provides more detailed data on plants and animals in the order shown in the book for the detail-minded student or science teacher.

"Barron’s cut-paper collages have the crispness of an autumn afternoon, and Flatt smoothly touches on estimation, counting by fives and tens, counting backwards, and other mathematical concepts while maintaining a gentle, whimsical tone," observes Publishers Weekly in timely fashion.

Shaping Up! Shaping Up Summer by Lizann Flatt

What if nature knew numbers like you?

If you were near,
this fact would appear:
the Sun is actually
the shape of a SPHERE.

But the Sun is so far
from where we all are
that we see it as a CIRCLE

(Did you know that it's a star?)

Author Lizann Flatt's last book in her seasonal Math in Nature series, Shaping Up Summer (Math in Nature) (Owlkids Books, 2014), beguiles the child into seeing the shapes, symmetry, and trajectories of summer plants and animals.

In one eye-pleasing double-page spread devoted to the concept of symmetry, she shows a spotted newt twisting and curling to climb a log  and one lying out flat and asks, "Which newt is symmetrical?" Children are encouraged to spot other symmetries--a ladybug's carapace, a painted turtle, a swimming fish seen from above,  a dragonfly and water spider, and a floating water lily bloom.  The water lily offers both symmetry and asymmetry, depending on how the eye sees it.

In another spread, a hummingbird moth, grasshopper, and katydid make their ways across the page, and the child is asked to trace their path, over, under, above, and below the plants which tempt them.

Plane figures and solid figures abound as well in Ashley Barron's ebullient cut-paper collages in a summertime display of colors, from warm sunny yellows and blooming pinks to cool blues and deep-shaded greens. Barron's artwork gives this one its visual pizazz and movement as it encourages the child to look more closely at each illustration. Author Flatt seems to assume that children have already encountered the simple mathematical concepts she discusses and instead proffers enticing opportunities for reinforcement of these skills. Humorous touches include ghost crabs improbably sculpting cones. pyramids, and cylinders out of seaside sand and an orb spider spinning out a couple of steamships setting sail in her web. The author includes an appended Nature Notes with thumbnail sketches and information about featured animals--dolphins, coyotes, skunks, puffins--for a bit of nature study as well.

Best for adult-and-child sharing, Shaping Up Summer (Math in Nature) concludes the cycle in Flatt and Barron's four-seasons series, which also include Counting on Fall (Math in Nature), Sizing Up Winter (Math in Nature), and Sorting Through Spring (Math in Nature). (read my reviews here).

Plenty of Patterns: Sorting Through Spring by Lizann Flatt

COULD FLOWERS ONLY GROW

IN SET PATTERNS, ROW BY ROW?

Which rows make an ABA, ABA pattern?

What other patterns do you see?

Patterns do occur in nature, but most of the patterns in LizAnn Flatt's new Sorting Through Spring (Math in Nature) (Owlkids Books, 2013) are not among those naturally occurring regularities--they appear as devised teaching opportunities in the bright and stylized cut-paper collage illustrations of artist Ashley Barron.

With the exception of the spring ritual of the male prairie hen--woo-woo flap, stampity stomp-stomp!--most of the double-page spreads simply use spring cycles to teach the concept of sorting, a math skill that involves recognizing similarities and differences and spotting repetitions, or patterns, of like and unlike. Some concepts may require previous learning, such as what an ABA pattern is.

Examples range from the simple--recognizing the color pattern in piles of shed yellow or white caribou antlers--to the advanced, calculating the ratio between the number of eggs laid by robins as opposed to hummingbirds (robins lay four; hummingbirds lay two). Many of the tasks involve skills in between, such as greater than or less than or reading a bar graph about where mosquitoes lay eggs and interpreting where in the illustrations the mosquitoes will leave their eggs. Some pattern pages are open-ended, asking what other ways the items could be grouped, by color or shape or pattern.

One double-page spread deals with reasoning as well as probability, or at least thinking beyond the counting box, asking whether a father fox is most likely to bring home a dinner of voles, squirrels, or rabbits, a query which lends itself to considerations beyond which one of the three animals are most plentiful on the page. (For example, squirrels on a tree trunk are unlikely catches for a ground-based predator, no matter how many there are!)

An appendix, "Nature Notes," offers short summaries of the spring habits and behaviors of the featured animals, but provide few clues to the mathematical queries in the text. The second in the Math in Nature series, Sorting Through Spring (Math in Nature), published in Canada, features some animals (caribou, lake smelt) which will not be familiar to students in the more southern regions of North America, but whether the pictured animal is called a caribou, a reindeer, or just a deer, a smelt or just a fish is not material to the mathematical concept presented. Picture books which deal with mathematical concepts such as probability, ratio, and complex patterns are rare, and the charming illustrations of animals in spring make this book an attractive seasonal choice for young readers. The small size of this book and the detail of the patterns make this one best for adult-and-child use, although some older puzzle-preferring readers may choose to pour over the pictures by themselves.

My review of the first book in this series, Counting on Fall (Math in Nature) can be seen here.

Do Weasels Count the Weeks? Sizing Up Winter by Lizann Flatt

WHEN WINTER WINDS BLOW,
COLD ICE CRYSTALS GROW.
HIGH IN THE CLOUDS,
IS THERE ONE SIZE FOR SNOW?

Lizann Flatt's third book in her series, Sizing Up Winter (Math in Nature) (OwlKids Books, 2013), takes an open-ended look at the concept of measurement in a wintry setting. How far does a snowflakes fall?

It depends--on where it starts and where it ends!

There are plenty of regular counting activities in this imaginative look at winter in snowy climes: how many otters in two different lakes, how many hops does it take a snowshoe hare and a deer mouse to cover the same area, and how many days does it take a weasel to go from wintry white to warm weather brown? Other numerical skills have their moments: estimation (Which has more mass, the mama polar bear or her twin babies?) and comparison (Which frog is the fattest?). But the author also dips into the concept of relativity in scale, using one chickadee or one cardinal as units of measurement:

HOW MANY BIRDS LONG IS EACH FEEDER?

One curious double-page spread shows the typical musk oxen protective circle as conceived as a clock face and asks what time it is by the ox clock, an intriguingly open-ended question.

And one spread points to the difference between man-made objective measurements and subjective measurements:

SO HOW LONG IS WINTER, AND HOW DO YOU KNOW?
IS IT WINTER AS LONG AS IT'S COLD AND THERE'S SNOW?
WHEN WILL WINTER BE OVER? WHAT DAY WILL IT GO?

Is it still winter if it snows in May? Or June? For the child whose mind enjoys calculating outside as well as inside the box, beyond the everyday rules of measurement of distance, area, capacity, mass, and time, Sizing Up Winter (Math in Nature) offers a chance to rehearse the usual counting skills while realizing that they are themselves human constructs, our agreed-upon language for appraising the natural world, necessary but not sufficient to the whole of nature. Ashley Barron's cheery cut-paper collage illustrations make this book inviting to young eyes, and the author's appended "Nature Notes" offer tantalizing thumbnail descriptions of some of the more northerly animals, such as snow fleas and snowy owls, featured in this Canadian production .  It's not your father's counting book, as Kirkus Reviews suggests, saying "When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way."

Other books in the Math In Nature series include Counting on Fall (Math in Nature) and Sorting Through Spring (Math in Nature) (see my reviews here).