Place Value

Great book but not suitable for UK as it is American and talks about dollars and their units of measure :)

Its okay

This book does a great job of explaining why we have place value. It has an analogy between letters and digits, and helps to explain how a digit has different values based on position, just the way that a word is different if the letters are scrambled. My child often asks why we have a base-10 system (about why there are zeros etc) and this book also provides an explanation. I've also told him that there were base-4 systems that counted the spaces between the fingers. I wish that the author had discussed the importance of zero as a concept. The pictures follow the story of monkeys setting up a cafe and cooking one giant cupcake. I think that the illustrations are cute and they also help to introduce the idea of using math to bake.

Best bought at ages 5-6 when the kid already knows about place value system...but definitely a good example of interesting teaching literature

This book came in good condition. However, I don’t recommend it as a resource to explain place value to children. You’re far better off explaining the concept yourself in a much simpler way using manipulatives. It is nothing more than an explanation of big numbers that will not be accessible for younger children who are interested in big numbers. For us, this book is way over explained and not very enjoyable to read. This is because there is no story. It simply takes 20 pages to explain how we can use the same numbers 0-9 in different orders and they mean something different depending on their order. I bought this book for my gifted three year old who loves big numbers. I thought it might build upon his understanding of big numbers in a way that’s fun and story like. This wasn’t the case. It’s far too wordy and complicated.

Good book