Review: Scieszka, J., & Smith, L. (1995). Math curse.

Scieszka, J., & Smith, L. (1995). Math curse. New York: Viking.

Now class, raise your hand if you’ve ever felt like a “math zombie,” a “raving math lunatic,” doomed to face each day with a “lifetime of problems.”  That’s exactly how our young protagonist feels when her math teacher, Mrs. Fibonacci, tells her she can think of anything as a math problem...and she does.  Through comedic illustrations and swirling, wandering text, she begins to see each aspect of her day as a problem--a word problem. Her head is spinning with all the sardonic questions, quirky commands and sometimes silly answers.  She finally breaks the curse with more word play when she makes a “whole,” or in this case a hole, and frees herself.

Lane Smith is the illustrator of the edge-to-edge images, and with darkened but colorful collage, he cleverly portrays the spiraling chaos of the character’s mental state.  It is an overwhelmed feeling that many readers may have experienced in one subject or another, perhaps especially those of us who prefer literature to fractions, well captured in the busy pictures and text.

The message is that if we--both children and adults--approach challenges with creativity and self-assurance, we will soon find that they are “no problem.”  Critically acclaimed, this picture book won a number of awards, including the 1997 Texas Bluebonnet Award.