The Greedy Triangle Author: Visit Amazon's Marilyn Burns Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0545042208 | Format: EPUB
The Greedy Triangle Description
From Publishers Weekly
The author of The I Hate Mathematics Book celebrates geometric shapes in this informative but visually cluttered addition to the Marilyn Burns Brainy Day series. Her main character, a triangle with gleaming black eyes and a perky grin, leads a full life-it can take the shape of a slice of pie or rest in an elbow's angle "when people put their hands on hips." Yet the triangle aspires to greater complexity, so it asks a "shapeshifter" to turn it into a quadrilateral (the shape of a TV or a book's page), then into a pentagon (a house's facade) and so forth. Burns fails to show that the triangle is "greedy"; it's just adventurous. But her story successfully introduces basic polygons, and her afterword to adults suggests ways of teaching children some of the finer points about geometry (e.g., the concept of a plane or rhomboids). For his picture book debut, Silveria chooses tart shades of yellow, orange, lavender and green. His airbrushed colored-pencil compositions have suitably angular details; speckled paint and multicolored doodles soften the effect but create a sense of disorder. If the art as a whole is somewhat jumbled, readers still come away from this volume noticing and naming the shapes of the objects around them. Ages 6-9.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 1?An offbeat introduction to geometry. When a triangle tires of having only three sides, he asks the shapeshifter to change him first into a quadrilateral, then a pentagon, a hexagon, and so forth until he realizes he is happiest as a triangle: he can hold up a roof, be a slice of a pie and, best of all, slip into place when people put their hands on their hips. "That way I always hear the latest news...which I can tell my friends." The text is clever and shows more than the usual places to find shapes?part of a computer screen, a section of a soccer ball, a floor tile. The acrylic and colored-pencil illustrations are colorful, abstract, and filled with smiling shapes done in shades of turquoise, pink, and yellow. A two-page spread of suggestions for adults to reinforce the math lessons featured is included at the end of the book.?Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Age Range: 4 - 8 years
- Grade Level: Preschool - 3
- Series: Scholastic Bookshelf
- Paperback: 32 pages
- Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 1, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0545042208
- ISBN-13: 978-0545042208
- Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.2 x 0.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
The Greedy Triangle is a most unusual book in that it will appeal to three age groups, 4-5 year olds, those learning polygons for the first time, and for adults who never felt that comfortable with geometry. The book opens up the reader's mind to seeing geometric shapes all around, while providing a simple basis to remember the differences among polygons (they each differ in having one angle and side more or less than the most similar polygon).
"Once there was a triangle that was -- as most triangles are -- always busy." The book points out some of the many frequent places where triangles can be found such as "holding up roofs, supporting bridges, making music, catching the wind for sailboats, being slices of pie . . . and more." "The triangle's favorite thing, however, was to slip into place when people put their hands on their hips." This last refers to the space between the arm and the body. The triangle likes this shape because "that way I always hear the latest news . . . which I can tell my friends." And his friends like that.
But the triangle finds this boring at some point, and seeks the help of a shapeshifter to become a quadrilateral. Ennui recurs and the former triangle moves through a transition successively into a pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, and decagon. For the first few shapes, the book outlines places you find these shapes in nature and human-made objects. A connection is also made as to whether those shapes provide juicy stories to tell friends. There is adult humor, such as noting about not being able to tell secrets learned at the Pentagon.
Eventually, this all becomes self-limiting. "Its sides were so smooth it had trouble keeping its balance.
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