Counting in Dog Years and Other Sassy Math Poems
by Betsy Franco; illus. by Priscilla Tey
Primary, Intermediate    Candlewick    40 pp.    g
10/22    978-1-5362-0116-1    $18.99

Silly humor and punchy payoffs abound in Franco’s (Mathematickles!, rev. 7/03) latest math-themed poetry collection. Take, for example, “Mom Time,” in which “Hold on a minute, hon” equates to waiting far longer than sixty seconds, which leads to the ­conclusion: “The next time Mom says, ‘Clean your room. / Right now! Your floor’s a wreck!’ / I’ll answer, ‘Sure. No problem, Mom. / I’ll do it in a sec.’” That dash of cheeky ’tude is spot-on for the audience, and better yet, they’ll never feel like they’re stuck staring at a dull textbook. That’s thanks, in part, to Tey’s whimsical gouache scenes, a mix of everyday kids and unusual creature-contraption hybrids. Added to that are the child-friendly topics, such as pet mice–­ownership gone awry (exponential growth!) and the “exceedingly cruel” unfairness of just three months of summer vacation. Then there’s the math content: yes, standard fare like fractions and solid shapes make appearances, but so do multiplying by sevens and number palindromes. Franco ends with “Math Makes Me Feel Safe,” a warm-hearted finale that counters mathphobia by centering math’s connection to and meaning in daily life: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. // That watching stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!”

From the November/December 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.