Pizza Counting

by Christina Dobson, Matthew Holmes (Illustrator)

Overview

These pizzas have all the right ingredients. Pepperoni, cheese, and onions make a purr-fect pizza cat. Is it time for a clock pizza made of sausages and peppers?
Count the toppings on these pizza masterpieces, then divide them up into filling fractions. Zesty pizza facts add to the flavorful fun.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780881063394
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	07/01/2003
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	403,646
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.14(d)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Christina Dobson lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with her husband and two children (all pizza lovers). She is a graduate of Harvard University and earned an M.Ed. at the University of Michigan. She has taught high school Russian and Social Studies. Now Christina coordinates a family literacy program and assists with a mentoring program for teenage girls.

Editorial Reviews

Pizza Counting by Christina Dobson, illus. by Matthew Holmes, introduces kids to counting and fractions using decorated pizzas. Kids can make a grinning pizza face with varying numbers of vegetables and learn how many pizzas it would take to circle the Earth at the equator. Realistic artwork keeps the counting easy. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 4-The math concepts of addition, large numbers, and fractions are illustrated with artfully decorated pizzas depicting a smiling face, a cat, a flag, etc. The accompanying text counts the ingredients: "-five eggplant stars, six red onion strips, seven cheese stripes, and eight red pepper pieces." Numerals are used to show the total of two items, for example, 5 + 6 = 11. Another pie is symmetrically decorated with 100 garnishes and duplicated 10 times on one page and 100 times on the next to illustrate the numbers 1000 and 10,000. Millions and billions are demonstrated by citing the number of pizzas needed to circle the globe and to reach the moon. The book concludes with the pies divided to show fractional concepts. The tone is instructional rather than entertaining, but this title's use for teaching may be complicated by the wide range of topics covered. The concepts are as simple as 1 + 2 = 3 and as complex as choosing the larger fraction between 3/12 and 1/4. Although the text gives some interesting facts about pizza, it sometimes lacks a clear focus. Still, the use of pizza provides a real-life application for learning. It is most effective in illustrating fractional concepts and helping students visualize large numbers.-Adele Greenlee, Bethel College, St. Paul, MN Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Pizzas are fun. It took some relentless didacticism from Dobson to rob them of their simple pleasure. She starts with some playful examples of pizza's possibilities: big, round, and flat, the pie invites decoration as a face, a flag, or a clock. The little factual tidbits that attend the story, set in smaller typeface, are fun at first-for instance, the first pizzas had no tomatoes because Italy had no tomatoes until 1500-but also hint at things to come. What comes is a math class. How many pizzas does it take to feed a giant, how many to reach the Moon? Okay, but then come an endless number of fractions, like the game in which you keep dividing an object in half, never getting to the end. By the time readers reach, "A pizza that is cut into eight equal slices is divided into eights. If you eat four eights of this flower pizza, you will still have one half left," their stomachs are more than full. The facts get less appealing, too-"some people like pesto, which is usually made from basil leaves, olive oil, grated cheese, pine nuts, and garlic"-as does the cheese in Holmes's pizza art, which looks like if you took a bite, you would find it dry and nasty underneath. (Picture book. 5-10)

Kirkus Reviews