Place Value

I not particularly fond of books about math, but if I had to read about it then I would read this silly book. In the book, lots of monkeys work in the “Banana Café” where they teach place value wile baking banana cupcakes. They make some silly mistakes. For instance, switching the 9 and 7 in 9,347 and turned it to 7,349. Place Value uses the similarities in letters and numbers to explain place values. It says, “A is both a letter and word. 1 is both a number and a digit.” I have never seen a view like this one. But this approach teaches place value very well. This makes more sense than any other method.

The illustrations are beautiful. Edward Miller used colorful cartoon graphics to illustrate his book and that it was a wise choice. Using monkeys in the book was an entertaining choice, and made it less like school and more like a story. This book was an appropriate length and enjoyable for ages 7-9 learning about place value.