Working With Fractions

Money Madness

By David A. Adler

Illustrated by Edward Miller

Holiday House, $6.95, $16.95

Greedy Apostrophe

By Jan Carr

Illustrated by Ethan Long

Holiday House, $6.95

Here are three bright, colorful educational books from Holiday House Publishers that will warm the hearts of preschool and elementary teachers.

Former teacher David Adler offers two math-oriented books: "Working With Fractions" and "Money Madness." Young children are able to understand immeasurably more than we assume, and what better way to feed their precocious natures than to introduce them to math as a bedtime story?

Though fractions have long been the terror of elementary school students, Adler makes fractions understandable for the preschool set. After a few "Read it again!" requests, even the youngest children should be able to make sense of numerators and denominators.

"Money Madness" is a clever survey of why we use paper money. Although preschoolers may get lost when Uncle Sam displays the value of a country's money going up or down, the book is an excellent rudimentary explanation of the way we trade goods for cash. Some government officials need to give this one a perusal.

If your child has a grammatical bent, or even if his grammar's just bent, "Greedy Apostrophe" attempts to clear up punctuation problems. Through the use of an apostrophe struck with avarice, author Jan Carr tries to teach that apostrophes should be used to show possession or plural possession, but not in plural words like "books" or "pencils."

The lesson gets a little grammar-vocabulary rich for the youngest readers, but it should offer some reinforcement for the elementary school student. An entire book could be done on just the use of "its" or "it's."

Kudos to these authors for helping us remember that it's a gift of fun to learn with a child.

See more of Southern Pines writer Charlene Vermeulen's reviews at www.prudereviews.blogspot.com.