Product Review: The Great Graph Contest [Paperback] (Ages 4 to 8)
Books for Young People
I enjoy analyzing data and organizing information. This pleasure really boils down to wanting to clearly understand the world around me and looking at many different variables to make sense of things. It became obvious to me in my first economics course that my analyzing nature made it an appropriate major for me (at the time I took the course purely as an elective) that I actually switched majors that very first week of class. My ‘real’ job has to do with analyzing data and when I saw The Great Graph Contest as an early educational tool for kids, I knew I wanted to check it out and share with my daughter to get her excited about data analysis.
The Great Graph Contest is a children’s book about a lizard and a frog creating and explaining different types of graphs in order to win a contest for the best data manager set up by their snail friend (and judge). People with children have probably seen the great obsession that young kids (especially toddlers!) have with organizing objects and this provides a visual outlet on how to organize information for children as young as four. Gonk the toad and Beezy the lizard go through the entire process of collecting data through tallies and surveys and creating many different kinds of graphs, such as Venn diagrams and bar graphs, in order to compete for the best data organizer. It is not the outcome of the contest that matters (ok, so it’s a tie), it is the informative and entertaining math concepts that make this a winning read for kids. Although the names of the graphs aren’t listed throughout the book, there is a back section called ‘More about Graphs’ that discusses each graph name and type in more detail as well as a section on how to ‘Make Your Own Graph’. Brilliant!
About Holiday House Publishers: Holiday House, a New York, NY publishing company, has been providing books for young people since 1935. Holiday House even has a book on its own story, called Holiday House: The First Sixty-Five Years, about their history of being an independent publisher of children’s books that is available for purchase. Check out the Holiday House Free Materials for Teachers and Librarians link on their website for all their supplemental book materials as well as a page of author podcasts.
Bonus! Here is a supplemental project idea for your child for The Great Graph Contest from the website of the author and illustrator, Loreen Leady:
‘Ask your friends a question such as “How many pets do you have?” or “What is your favorite sport?” Survey each friend and write down their answer. Decide which kind of graph is the best way to display the information, and then make a poster with construction paper and markers’.
The Great Graph Contest [Paperback] (Ages 4 to 8)
List Price: $7.95
Momma's Bacon 