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Books that have to do with building or construction make excellent
connections to Build It! Festival, including books at the appropriate
age level about famous works of architecture and/or architects.
The books by David Macaulay listed here are highly recommended.
Several books that focus on decoding patterns are listed and connect
nicely to Activity 6 and Activity 8. Any books in which geometric
shapes, designs, symmetry, or spatial visualization play a part
would fit in nicely. We welcome your additional suggestions, particularly
for stories that describe a process of construction similar to
what your students experience in the activities in this guide.
You may find the article about tessellations on page 306 of interest.
Anno’s Math Games III
Block City
Bridges
Castle
Chicken Soup With Rice
Eight Hands Round: A Patchwork Alphabet
A Grain of Rice
Grandfather Tang’s Story
If You Look Around You
Jim Jimmy James
The Keeping Quilt
The King’s Chessboard
My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes
Opt: An Illusionary Tale
The Paper Airplane Book
The Patchwork Quilt
The Phantom Tollbooth
Round Trip
Rubber Bands, Baseballs and
Doughnuts: A Book about Topology
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
The Secret Birthday Message
Shadowgraphs Anyone Can Make
The Shapes Game
Shapes, Shapes, Shapes
Spaces, Shapes and Sizes
The Tipi: A Center of Native American Life
The Village of Round and Square
Houses
Wings & Things
Anno’s
Math Games III
by Mitsumasa Anno
Philomel Books/Putnam & Grosset, New York. 1991
Grades: 4–10
Picture puzzles, games, and simple activities introduce the mathematical
concepts of abstract thinking, circuitry, geometry, and topology.
The book invites active participation. An exploration of triangles
includes origami shapes, while a section on ever-popular mazes
encourages logical thinking.
Return to titles list.
Block City
by Robert Louis Stevenson; illustrated by Ashley Wolff
Andersen Press, London. 1988
Grades: K–2
Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Block City”
comes alive for young children through vibrant illustrations.
Encourages imaginative building with blocks. Nice classic poetic
connection to pattern block and other construction activities.
Return to titles list.
Bridges
by Ken Robbins
Dial Books, New York. 1991
Grades: K–5
From delicate webs of steel spanning a vast river to stone
arches reaching over a highway, bridges expand our world by joining
one place with another. This book of hand-tinted photographs of
bridges includes many types with descriptions of their design
and use.
Return to titles list.
Castle
by David Macaulay
Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 1977
Grades: K–6
One of a number of outstanding and beautifully illustrated
books that focus on human structures, the work of building, architecture,
shapes, and related content. Any and all of these books make a
great connection to Build It! Festival. Other David Macaulay books
in this category, with the same publisher, in the K–6 grade
range are: Cathedral (1973); City (1974); Pyramid (1975); and
Unbuilding (1980).
Return to titles list.
Chicken Soup With Rice
by Maurice Sendak
Scholastic, New York. 1986
Grades: Preschool–2
This classic of rhyming verse about eating chicken soup throughout
the year connects well to a discussion of repetitive patterns
and the cycle of months in a year.
Return to titles list.
Eight Hands Round: A Patchwork Alphabet
by Ann Whitford Paul; illustrated by Jeanette Winter
HarperCollins, New York. 1991
Grades: 2–6
Introduces the letters of the alphabet with the names of early
American patchwork quilt patterns and explains the origins of
the designs by describing the activity or occupations from which
they came. The designs are rich in geometric patterns.
Return to titles list.
A Grain of Rice
by Helena C. Pittman
Bantam Books, New York. 1992
Grades: 2–5
A hard-working farmer’s son wins the hand of the Emperor’s
daughter through clever use of mathematical knowledge of what
results when a grain of rice is doubled every day for 100 days.
Connects to Activity 6 and is an excellent literary introduction
to the concept of exponential growth.
Return to titles list.
Grandfather Tang’s Story
by Ann Tompert; illustrated by Robert A. Parker
Crown, New York. 1990
Grades: K–5
Grandfather tells Little Soo a story about shape-changing
fox fairies who try to outdo each other until a hunter brings
danger to both of them. The seven shapes that grandfather uses
to tell the story are the pieces of an ancient Chinese puzzle,
a tangram. Students can make their own tangrams, replicating the
animals in the story or creating their own. This book is a wonderful
and powerful way to connect mathematics to literature because
in itself it embodies the connection, and because creating and
solving tangrams is an involving activity for all ages.
Return to titles list.
If You Look Around You
by Fulvio Testa
Dial Books for Young Readers/E.P. Dutton, New York. 1983
Grades: K–3
Geometric shapes, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, points
and lines are depicted in scenes of children in- and out-of-doors.
Nice real-world connections to geometry.
Return to titles list.
Jim Jimmy James
by Jack Kent
Greenwillow Books/William Morrow, New York. 1984
Out of print
Grades: K–2
One boring rainy day, Jim Jimmy James makes friends and plays
with his shadow. A very elementary look at the concept of reflection.
As a follow-up, children can partner with a friend and play shadow
games with each other. Shadows and reflections are among the earliest
phenomena related to shape and geometry that children experience.
(Note: Some of the illustrations in the book are not accurate
reflections.)
Return to titles list.
The Keeping Quilt
by Patricia Polacco
Simon & Schuster, New York. 1988
Grades: K–5
A homemade quilt ties together the lives of four generations
of an immigrant Jewish family, remaining a symbol of their enduring
love and faith. Strongly moving text and pictures. A resource
to begin a quilt project. Quilts are creative real-life examples
of fitting shapes into a defined space, including tessellations—the
intriguing mathematical and creative art of exactly fitting similar
shapes into a defined space. Sidney Taylor award winner.
Return to titles list.
The King’s Chessboard
by David Birch; illustrated by Devis Grebu
Dial Books, New York. 1988
Grades: K–6
A proud king learns a valuable (and exponential) lesson when
he grants his wise man a request for rice that doubles with each
day and square on the chessboard. Connects to Activity 6 and,
more generally to the mathematics strands of number, pattern,
and function.
Return to titles list.
My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes
by Eve Sutton; illustrated by Lynley Dodd
Scholastic, New York. 1973
Grades: K–2
This delightful book has rhymes about cats all over the world
and “my cat” who likes to hide in boxes! The predictable
pattern encourages reading participation. The idea of boxes and
using shapes as homes is an early connection to structure and
geometry.
Return to titles list.
Opt: An Illusionary Tale
by Arline and Joseph Baum
Viking Penguin, New York. 1987
Grades: 2–6
A magical tale of optical illusions in which objects seem
to shift color and size while images appear and disappear. You
are an active participant in this book as you are guided through
the land of Opt. Explanations of the illusions and information
on how to make your own illusions are included.
Return to titles list.
The Paper Airplane Book
by Seymour Simon; illustrated by Byron Barton
Viking Press, New York. 1971
Grades: 3–6
A user-friendly book on the aerodynamics of airplanes, complete
with instructions on how to construct paper airplanes. Emphasis
on the structure of airplanes and how changes in structure/shape
impact the forces in flight. Additional experiments are included.
Return to titles list.
The Patchwork Quilt
by Valerie Flournoy; illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
Dial Books, New York. 1985
Grades: K–5
Using scraps cut from the family’s old clothing, Tanya
helps her grandmother piece together a quilt of memories. When
Grandma becomes ill, Tanya’s whole family also gets involved
in the project and they all work together to complete the quilt.
Quilts, like geometry, are fascinating explorations of shapes
and how they fit together.
Return to titles list.
The Phantom Tollbooth
by Norton Juster; illustrated by Jules Feiffer
Random House, New York. 1989
Grades: 2–8
Milo has mysterious and magical adventures when he drives
his car past The Phantom Tollbooth and discovers The Lands Beyond.
On his journey, Milo encounters amusing situations that involve
numbers, geometry, measurement, and problem solving. The continuous
play on words is delightful.
Return to titles list.
Round Trip
by Ann Jonas
Greenwillow Books/William Morrow, New York. 1983
Grades: K–3
Illustrated solely in black and white, this story of a trip
between the city and the country is read at first in the standard
way, then, on reaching the end, the book is flipped over as the
story continues. Lo and behold, the illustrations turned upside
down are transformed to depict the new scenes of the story. The
strong black/white contrast helps provide a startling demonstration
of the ways shapes and images fit into each other and can change,
depending on one’s perspective.
Return to titles list.
Rubber Bands, Baseballs and Doughnuts:
A Book about Topology
by Robert Froman; illustrated by Harvey Weiss
Thomas Y. Crowell, New York. 1972
Out of print
Grades: 4–8
This book introduces the world of topology through active
reader
participation. The activities provide concrete examples and insights
into abstract concepts.
Return to titles list.
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
by Eleanor Coerr; illustrated by Ronald Himler
Dell Books, New York. 1977
Grades: 3–6
In this true story, a young Japanese girl is dying of leukemia
as a result of radiation from the bombing of Hiroshima. According
to Japanese tradition, if she can fold 1,000 paper cranes, the
gods will grant her wish and make her well, but she was able to
fold only 644 paper cranes before she died. In her honor, a Folded
Crane Club was organized and each year on August 6, members place
thousands of cranes beneath her statue to celebrate Peace Day.
This moving story can introduce a class origami project to make
1,000 cranes or other origami figures, and of course connects
strongly to social studies and current events issues.
Return to titles list.
The Secret Birthday Message
by Eric Carle
Harper & Row, New York. 1986
Grades: Preschool–2
Instead of a birthday package, Tim gets a mysterious letter
written in code. Full-color pages, designed with cut-out shapes,
allow children to fully participate in this enticing adventure.
This book could serve as an exciting way to launch a series of
lessons on shapes, which could also include a project where the
students make “shape books.”
Return to titles list.
Shadowgraphs Anyone Can Make
by Phila H. Webb and Jane Corby
Running Press, Philadelphia. 1991
Grades: K–6
Illustrates how to make shadowgraphs of various animals and
humans. A simple verse accompanies each shadowgraph.
Students can create shadows and experiment with the size of
the shapes by holding hands nearer or farther from the light.
Return to titles list.
The Shapes Game
by Paul Rogers; illustrated by Stan Tucker
Henry Holt & Co., New York. 1989
Grades: Preschool–2
Fun-to-say riddles and pictures that are kaleidoscopes of
brilliant colors take young children from simple squares and circles
through triangles, ovals, crescents, rectangles, diamonds, spirals,
and stars.
Return to titles list.
Shapes, Shapes, Shapes
by Tana Hoban
Greenwillow Books/William Morrow, New York. 1986
Grades: Preschool–5
Color photographs of familiar objects, such as a chair, barrettes,
and manhole cover, are a way to study round and angular shapes.
Return to titles list.
Spaces, Shapes and Sizes
by Jane J. Srivastava; illustrated by Loretta Lustig
Thomas Y. Crowell, New York. 1980
Grades: 1–6
This inviting and well-presented nonfiction book about volume
shows the changing forms and shapes a constant amount of sand
can take. The book includes estimation activities, an investigation
of volume of boxes using popcorn, and a displacement activity.
The reader will want to try the activities.
Return to titles list.
The Tipi: A Center of Native American
Life
by David and Charlotte Yue
Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 1984
Grades: 5–8
This excellent book describes not only the structure and uses
of tipis, but Plains Indian social and cultural life as well.
Some of the cultural language and oversimplification are less
vital than they might be, but it is written in an accessible style.
There are good charts, exact measurements, and information on
the advantages of the cone shape. The central role played by women
in constructing the tipi and in owning it are discussed. While
this book includes some mention of the negative consequences of
European conquest, noting that in some places tipis were outlawed,
it is weak in this important area, and should be supplemented
with other books.
Return to titles list.
The Village of Round and Square Houses
by Ann Grifalconi
Little, Brown & Co., Boston. 1986
Grades: K–4
A grandmother explains to her listeners why the men live in
square houses and the women live in round ones in their African
village on the side of a volcano. The village of Tos really exists
in the remote hills of the Cameroons. This book can begin an exploration
of shape and structure. Caldecott Honor book.
Return to titles list.
Wings & Things
by Stephen Weiss; illustrated by Paul Jackson
St. Martin’s Press, New York. 1984
Adult reference
Contains more than 30 paper origami models that fly. The great
variety of shapes and flight patterns is especially appealing.
Return to titles list.
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