Pigs Will Be Pigs by Amy Axelrod; Sharon McGinley-NallyReview by: David J. WhitinThe Arithmetic Teacher, Vol. 41, No. 9 (MAY 1994), p. 563Published by: National Council of Teachers of MathematicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41196112 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 15:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Arithmetic Teacher.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.208 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 15:02:13 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Rolf Myller (New York: Dell, 1990).- David J. Whitin.

Bridges Go from Here to There, Forrest Wilson. 1993, 82 pp., $16.95 cloth. ISBN 0- 89133-206-5. Preservation Press, 1785 Mas- sachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036.

Readers learn about how the force of gravity affects the size, shape, and other structural properties of bridges. A short text, accompa- nied by some black-and-white drawings, helps readers understand some basic engineering prin- ciples involved in construction. Children learn how a long cantilevered bridge stays up and what forces are behind the stone towers of a masonry bridge. The mysterious forces that make bridges work, such as gravity, weight, mass, compression, and tension, are all re- vealed through a series of playful drawings that depict dogs, pigs, hippopotamuses, and other creatures stretching and cavorting over various expanses. The author-illustrator depicts vari- ous ways to cross a chasm or river from a simple log or stone to cast-iron pedestrian bridges, concrete beams, and cantilevered construction. The language of the text is terse, yet humorous and revealing: "A bridge is a path over a fall"; Logs are good for dogs, but elephants are an- other matter"; and "A cantilevered path can make a whole bridge so dogs can argue in the middle." Some of the language seems almost poetic, as the author describes the construction of an archway of stones that "take timid steps over the fall"; or when he describes the character- istics of pull: "Pull is obliging / Pull goes . . . / where pull is pulled / and when left alone hangs loose." This book provides an appealing invita- tion for children in the middle and upper grades to do some of their own building and construct- ing. - David J. Whitin.

Cookies, William Jaspersohn. 1993, 42 pp., $14.95 cloth. ISBN 0-02-7 47 822-X. Macmillan Children's Books, 866 Third Ave., 24th FL, New York, NY 10022.

This story describes the Famous Amos Choco- late Chip Cookie Stores, founded by Wally Amos in 1975. Through a series of black-and- white photographs, readers follow the process of preparing cookies, from mixing the batter to delivering the finished product to 200 000 stores throughout the nation. Statistics help give read- ers a sense for the magnitude of this large operation: on the average, the company uses over fifteen tons of flour a week; a factory in Augusta, Georgia, produces one million chocolate-chip cookies in a day; two large mixers, capable of stirring one thousand pounds of dough at a time, mix the cookie dough; fifty sealed bags of cookies roll off the assembly line every minute; and each truck carries away over 300 000 cookies, enough to supply dessert and

snacks to a small city. Detailed photographs help to capture each step of the process, as workers use plastic shovels to scrape the dough from large mixers into iron carts; a large de- positor with a nonstick die shapes the cookies; workers inspect the cookies as they come out of the oven on a conveyor belt; and a separator, with its system of chutes and buckets, fills bags with the freshly baked cookies.

Children might be interested in using the data from this book to perform some of their own calculations. For instance, they might wonder how long 300 000 cookies would feed the people in their community or how long it would take to produce enough bags of cookies to feed all the students in their school. They might want to investigate the history behind other popular food items as well. This book is a fascinating story for readers who can then personalize and extend it in their own ways. - David J. Whitin.

Pigs Will Be Pigs, Amy Axelrod, illus. by Sharon McGinley-Nally. 1994, 33 pp., $14.95 cloth. ISBN 0-02-76541 5-X. Four Winds Press, 866 Third Ave., 24th FL, New York, NY 10022.

Mr. Pig, Mrs. Pig, and their two piglets open the refrigerator and find very little left to eat. They decide to go out to eat but have little money: Mrs. Pig forgot to go to the bank, and Mr. Pig only has a dollar in his wallet. To solve their problem the whole family goes on a money hunt, rummaging through the house to find any loose change or forgotten dollar bills. Mr. Pig tosses all his clothes out of his bureau and finds his lucky two-dollar bill; Mrs. Pig scatters the jewelry from her jewelry box to discover two nickels, five pennies, and one quarter; the pig- lets scatter the toys from their toy chest to uncover six dimes and then find a dollar in the bookshelf. They continue to dismantle the house by rummaging through closets, the laundry room, kitchen cupboards, and a toolbox in the basement, discovering a cache of money each time. When Mr. Pig finally uncovers a twenty- dollar bill in his toolbox, the pigs figure they must have enough money and head off to their favorite restaurant. They dine at the "Enchanted Enchilada," where a menu of various dishes, beverages, and desserts is displayed on a two- page spread. They all enjoy a tasty meal and look forward to coming home to their cozy house, only to find it a chaotic mess from their earlier search.

The illustrations are crisp and colorful against a mostly white background and humorously convey the frantic nature of the pigs' search for money. Children will certainly enjoy counting the money along the way to learn how much the pigs finally discover (just as they enjoy calcu- lating how Alexander spends his money in Judith Viorst's Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday [New York: Macmillan,

1 987]). Children can also determine the amount of change the pigs received after paying for their meal. The answer is $2.71, and the illus- trator has hidden that sum on a page that readers must try to find. Unfortunately, the illustrator has hidden other sums on other pages, which serve no real purpose and may only distract readers. The hidden sums are not equivalent to the amount of money found on each page or the total amount of money uncovered. Despite this one fault, the book presents a good problem- solving story for readers. Children might enjoy figuring out what other possible meals the pigs could have ordered; they might also collect a series of menus from local restaurants and use them to perform some of their own calcula- tions. - David J. Whitin.

For Teachers

Dinosaurs Forever! Gr. K-4, Seddon Kelly Beaty and Irene Fountas. 1994, xxii + 250-pp. teacher's guide and poster, $22.45. ISBN 0- 201-81523-0. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 2725 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park, CA 94025- 9915, (800) 358-4566.

This book is written around the theme of dino- saurs. It is intended for use as a resource book by teachers of K-4 children developing and implementing an integrated open-ended study of dinosaurs.

The book is organized by school subject area: science, mathematics, language arts, mu- sic, and so on. The guide centers on experiences evolving from six science topics: reptiles, fos- sils, diversity and classification, behavior, Mesozoic era, and extinction. All the other school subjects are interwoven into the experi- ences that build these concepts for children.

Specific suggested mathematics experiences are from the areas of numeration and computa- tion, sorting and classifying, measuring and graphing of size and weight, and charting geo- logic time. The experiences range from some very simple counting activities using children' s books, poetry, and their own writing to some very challenging activities setting up time lines. The best activities involve a number of clever ways to make dinosaur size and weight a reality to interested children. The activities suggested in the book promote the NCTM curriculum standards' (1989) recommendations of reason- ing, communicating, problem solving, and connecting. They should help children make sense of the flood of information available about dinosaurs.

I would recommend this book to a teacher as a good way to get started using the thematic approach. It will also serve the teacher who has taught many thematic integrated studies as a valuable resource for new ideas and as new materials to teach those ideas. In short, it is the

MAY 1 994 563

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.208 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 15:02:13 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions