"Maths is fun" is the message of Maths Year 2000, and books with maths themes and storylines, like money, time and solving problems, are a great way to explore and investigate mathematical ideas. You can also take a trip to Numberland and download a celebrity screensaver while you are there.
Bunny Money
Rosemary Wells
(Picture Corgi Books, £4.99, age 5-8)
Max and Ruby set off to town with a handful of money to buy granny a present. But money soon goes if you don't keep tabs on it! Count the notes in the wallet and subtract the amounts as Max and Ruby spend their way through the story. You can photocopy the notes or cut them out from the back pages so your child can handle them. How much would they have saved if they had taken sandwiches instead of buying lunch? All good fun!
The Great Pet Sale
Mick Inkpen
(Hodder Children's Books, £5.99, age 5-8)
Have great fun listening to rat try to sell himself as the best bargain from the pet shop window for 1p as he takes us on a tour of the shop. All the animals have their price, and in the end they are all bought up for a pound. Have coins at the ready and count up the cost of the animals as you approach the magic 100 pennies.
Mrs Armitage on Wheels
Quentin Blake
(Red Fox, £4.99, age 5-8)
Having an eye to solving problems is an important maths skill, and Mrs Armitage knows how to solve a problem when it arises - or thinks she does. She adds a new contraption to her bicycle for every thought that comes in to her head, with predictable consequences. This is what happens when you're not a mathematician!
A Bargain for Frances
Russell Hoban
(Mammoth "I Can Read" series, £4.99, age 5-8)
Frances learns a painful lesson about her friendship with Thelma in this delightful book, but at the same time she learns about costs, value, trading and how to make the best of a bad bargain. Have some coins at the ready and ask your child to identify the coins for the one pound and nine pennies that are key to Frances' bargain. Discuss how much Frances paid out to get the blue china set. How much was Thelma left with? What things are worth one pound and nine pennies to your child? And what is a bargain?
Tick-Tock
Eileen Browne
(Walker Books, £4.99, age 5-8)
Mum Squirrel loves listening to her cuckoo clock. One afternoon she has to go out, but she warns her offspring Skip Squirrel not to bounce on the bouncy chairs next to her beloved clock. But Skip's pals come by and, guess what? Bounce, bounce, boing! The clock is broken. Thus starts a race against time to get it fixed before mum comes home at four o'clock. Find the clocks on each page and show your child how to tell the time as the deadline approaches.
Maths Curse
Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
(Puffin paperback, £4.99, age 5-8)
Mrs Fibonacci, the maths teacher, says one morning: "You can think of almost everything as a maths problem." Our child hero then panics and can't sort out the difference between a genuine maths problem, an idle muse and a chaotic jumble of illogical questions. A beautifully designed book, it is also very American in content (and thus fully metric), but it does raise interesting and challenging maths questions.
