The Best Of Times

Rating:
Summary: The Best Of Times - A Wonderful Resource!
Review: As a teacher, this book is a wonderful resource because it does not promote the memorization of multiplication facts, but rather it teaches the reader to problem solve and that there are different ways to approach a problem. As the title suggests, it is full of 'strategies' - when students attempt a mathematical problem of any sort, you want them to have a bank of strategies to draw from. This book is ideal for that. My students enjoyed the playful rhymes, almost musical in a way, as well as the bright, vibrant illustrations of all of Tang's books. Tang has a wonderful way of making math "make sense" for kids. Two thumbs up!

Rating:
Summary: Not for kids who are struggling to learn their facts!
Review: I bought this book thinking it might help my daughter learn her multiplication facts. However, for the strategies explained in this book to help, you'd have to be a math whiz, and also know a fair number of multiplication facts to begin with. For example, this is the strategy for multiplying by 6: "Six is pretty quick to do, just multiply by 3 then 2. If this sounds like too much trouble, triple first before you double!" (!!) Now, this might be handy if the book taught an easy way to triple, but the strategy for multiplying by 3 is: "Three is as easy as can be, if you triple what you see. In other words just add it thrice, this simply is one more than twice!" Simple, hunh? I would have given the book 1 star, but I liked the illustrations.