Mystery Math: A First Book of Algebra

David Glover has a very clever idea in the ongoing goal of making learning fun. True learning and retention involves bombarding the brain with multiple input, and then reinforceing those lessons learned to make the subject permanent. As for 'brain' input, this book involves nice eye candy pictures, and then reading to introduce and/or reinforce some basic concepts. Where it misses the mark is its reusabilty is almost zilch.Unfortunately, mathematics is often treated like a bag of tricks to be memorized subject. Kids are regularly taken through a year of memorizing bells and whistle tricks that have absolutely no cohesive theme (e.g., instead of teaching how multiplication is simply an extension of addtion [4 x 5 is the same as adding 4 - 5's together] and is the reverse of division). The old mantra of 'just memerzie' this or that is rampet throughout education up to and including graduate level course work. If you are a parent, I as a retired educator will pass on this advice: constantly reinforce daily practice of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Go to the grocery store and ask your kid "Oh 4 for $5, how much will that be for each," "I need 4 of those 79 cent cans of soup, how much will that cost," etc. These are the building blocks of algebra and without a strong foundation in them, teachers are speaking greek when they try to teach algebra.

book was too thin/short thus the subject covered was not expansive. however the depth of subject on what was written in the book is easy to understood for my 10 y.o. son.

I teach 5th grade math and this book was perfect to read to my kids and make cross curricular connections. The kids loved it. Very well written and interesting. I would definitely recommend this book and author to help kids struggling with math concepts.

Great group math activity - I made a sheet to go with it.

Super cute book and does a great way of explaining equations! Will use it for my math class.

I love the story line. While I have not used it in my class yet, I already have designs for next year!

Awesome book! My son loves it.

Super cute book, but better than that, it is a good literacy tool to use with students when either teaching or reviewing the process for finding "n". Students remember and associate finding the variable with this story.

this book made so easy the algebra teaching. I got it for my niece. it is so easy. I cannot believe this author teach this easy way to explain since the equality concept to the add or multiply. how it is possible no one found such an easy way to show it.

Engaging

My son really loves this book. We found it great in the run-up to Halloween!