I am not sure how long educators have been keeping lists of books that are valuable for teaching mathematical concepts. Certainly, children’s literature has always discussed mathematical issues because math is in so many parts of our daily lives! I was excited to find two math bibliographies from the 1950’s. I appreciated the glimpse into the history of using literature to teach math. Even in the 1950’s, math textbooks were including examples of literature that could be used to teach math and others were making bibliographies of more examples (Hutcheson et al 1956).

In the tables below, I list the books suggested from each bibliography and add categories for what type of math concept is included in the book.

Math Bibliographies From Half a Century Ago!

Hess’s 1957 article updates the Hutcheson et al bibliography, particularly for primary and older grades (Hess adds nothing to recommend for grade 4, and only a couple for grade 3). Hess’ bibliography for the younger grades is almost exclusively to teach counting and telling time. This is in line with the recommendations from Hutcheson et al in 1956: most books for younger grades involve counting, and Hutcheson et al repeatedly suggests that some books go “too far” when introducing counting beyond 10, showing microscopic or gigantic sizes, or dealing with “abstract” (their words) concepts.

Math Bibliographies From Today

Librarians have continued the practice of preparing lists of books that support teaching math. The Hawai‘i State Public Library System has a bibliography of 31 books, called Math Picture Books for Kids, that I found in the McCully Moiliili Branch when I was browsing the children’s books section. The School Library Journal has a 2014 post with 43 books.

I compared these two lists with the types of books I saw in the lists from the 1950’s. Today, there are many more books for younger ages dealing with larger numbers, problem-solving, and concepts the authors from the 1950’s might have felt too abstract. For instance, Demi’s One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale came up on both the new lists, and this book is for younger students and deals with exponential growth.

Even with all the new math concepts compared to lists from the 1950’s, telling time is notably absent from the newer lists; only one book, from the HSPLS list, focuses on time (Hutchins’ A Second is a Hiccup). Even with digital time-telling devices, I think being able to tell time on a clock is still important. More important is being able to correctly add and subtract time–this is really difficult even for adults! I’d look for newer books about working with time, because I think the authors in the 1950’s were smart for including such books.

References

• Hess, Adrien L. 1957. “A Bibliography of Mathematics Books for Elementary School Libraries.” The Arithmetic Teacher 4 (1): 15–20.
• Hutcheson, Ruth, Edna Mantor, and Marjorie Holmberg. 1956. “The Elementary School Mathematics Library: A Selected Bibliography.” The Arithmetic Teacher 3 (1): 8–16.
• Kropp, Lisa G. 2014. “Marvelous Math Books for PreK and Up.” School Library Journal, March. http://www.slj.com/2014/03/programs/marvelous-math-books-for-prek-and-up/.
• Le Page, Mysti. 2012. “Math Picture Books for Kids”. Hawai‘i State Public Library System.

Suggested Current Books (Compiled from Kropp and Le Page)

Older Books For Comparison (Compiled from Hess and Hutcheson)

Note: Author, Title, Date, and Recommended Age/Grade reported from the source. Categories are sometimes suggested from the source but I assigned categories to most of the books based on the source’s annotation.