Scieszka, J and Smith, L. (1995) Math Curse. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Brief Annotation: A little boy’s world spins out of control when his teacher, Mrs. Fibbonacci tells him that everything can be a math problem. He wakes up the next day and realized no matter where he goes in his day (even when he’s not in math class) he’s doing math! He decides he’s been cursed until he discovers fractions, the only way out.
Genre: Concept book/realistic fiction
Grade level: 2-7
Readers who will like this: Readers who like math, and readers who struggle with math. Students who like collage style artwork.
Response rating: 4 I liked this book a lot. I was defiantly a reluctant math student and I think I would have enjoyed a book like this to remind me of why learning math is so important. There are also a lot of fun plays on words in the book to engage the more literary minded reader. I think any of the problems presented in the story would be fun to work on with a class, and it would be fun to have students start finding math problems in their own lives.