The Book Shelf: The Number Devil

The Number Devil

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

264 Pages

Ages 9-12

Summary

The Number Devil is a charming tale of a little boy with nightmares. Robert dreaded going to sleep because every night he had dreams of the devil. However, these were not demonic dreams; rather, he dreamt that the devil would visit him at night and teach him a different mathematical procedure. In this mathematical adventure, the reader is taken step by step through everything from basic addition through exponential numbers with adorable examples that allows you to apply the math to real life.

This book helped me so much when I was younger. In fact, I had to read it in sections as I grew up mainly because there are things in there that can only be understood when you reach a certain level. For instance, you wouldn't expect a nine-year-old to understand about exponential growth, but the multiplication and division examples could be quite useful.

The Original Purpose

This blog actually originated as a class assignment. The first "younger reading" class I took had each student create a different note card for every book they read. The note card was to have all of the information on the book as well as a brief summary and our reaction to what we read. With my children's literature class being the second class that required a similar assignment, I decided that a blog was more practical than trying to find some place to store several hundred 3x5 notecards. Thus the birth of "The Book Shelf." I hope you enjoy my insights.