Recommended Readings

MATH:  Facing an American Phobia, by Marilyn Burns, Math Solutions Publications, 1998. 

Reviewed by ICES Counselor Marsha Hart

How many arithmetic problems do you encounter on a daily basis?  Balancing the checkbook, shopping for groceries, making change, keeping score for a game…. How do you calculate the answers to these problems?  In your head?  With pencil and paper?  Using a calculator or computer?  Is it okay to estimate or is it critical to be accurate? 

These questions are among the issues author, educator, and consultant, Marilyn Burns, addresses in her fun-approach-to-math book, MATH:  Facing an American Phobia.  Burns states, “It’s been documented that the time parents spend reading with their children clearly has a positive and lasting effect on their children’s reading success….So it also makes sense that this same kind of loving attention from parents would go a long way to support children’s math learning.   For many parents, learning math was a nightmare and they haven’t a clue about how to offer their children another viewpoint or give them a more positive experience.”

If you’re among the” clueless,” this book is for you!  Burns offers not only tips and suggestions for parents, but also valuable insights for educators as well.  You may find yourself empathizing as she describes her own math education:  “The emphasis in math class was on what we [students] did, not on what we understood.  I object to having been taught to do things without also having been expected to understand what I was doing, why I was doing it, and why what I did worked.”

The good news, Burns reports, is that math classes today are different from those we [parents and teachers] experienced.  Math-teaching reform is focused on keeping our children interested in continuing to learn mathematics.  Reading MATH: Facing an American Phobia, you will puzzle with Burns over how to determine what size her holiday turkey should be, or how to determine if her pizza dough has doubled in volume, or how to help a fellow shopper figure out the final price of a sale item.  You’ll be intrigued to consider the solutions in her section titled, “Not Your Everyday Answer Key.”  But more importantly, you will learn how to engage and relate to children in ways that support, encourage and promote the life-long love of learning math.

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Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever, by Mem Fox, Harcourt, Inc., 2008, 2001.

Reviewed by ICES Counselor Marsha Hart

“It was suggested that I speak on camera to the mother and father of a three-year-old about why his parents should read to their children. These parents were keen to do their very best for their little boy, but they had rarely read to him….He couldn’t read or write a word….A few minutes later, lying on the floor of his living room with the cameras rolling, I read to him. Then I read with him. And then he read to me. All of this happened in fifteen minutes.”

Sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it? Unbelievable even?!  When you finish this amazing first chapter of Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever, by literacy expert and children’s author Mem Fox, you will be challenged by her claim, “If every parent — and every adult caring for a child — read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in their lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.”

I recommend Reading Magic to every adult who has a relationship with a child — as a parent, grandparent, friend, caregiver, or teacher. Written not to educators, but to all adults who care for and about children, it will encourage, empower,and excite you with the prospect of playfully, joyfully, and easily paving the way for a child to not only learn to read, but to learn to love reading. As Ms. Fox writes, “If children are exposed to books, print, pictures, page-turning and gorgeous stories that lighten up their lives, and fabulous crazy-wild-happy teachers who switch them on to loving books, they will long to learn to read.”  What better gift can we give our children than to wipe out illiteracy and empower a new generation equipped with this most basic life skill — reading! 

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