More or Less a Mess

Hello Reader! Math Level 2

by Sheila Keenan, Marilyn Burns, Patrick Girouard (Illustrator)

A humorous rhyming story follows the adventure of a girl who must clean up her room, from the pants on the dresser to the shirts on the lamp to the wet socks in the fish bowl. Original.

Genres: Mathematics

32 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Sheila Keenan is an established author of fiction and nonfiction for young people. Her books include the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Dogs of War, the picture book As the Crow Flies, I Spy The Illuminati Eye, and O, Say Can You See? America’s Symbols, Landmarks and Inspiring Words, among other selected titles. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Abigail Mayeske · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was too cute! The child does lots of sorting, and in many different ways. You can also see how hiding everything under the bed does not work. And the book also shows that some messes can be overwhelming but you must keep trying. This would be great for talking about sorting, but also discussing ways to problem solve to clean that room.

[Caontie McNeal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good book to share with an older class , too long a read for younger children to sit an listen in one reading. Good book to demonstrate how to keep things in order.

[Drew Dillenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a fan of these rhyming books

[Ashley Fischer]

I could use this book in both math class and English class. I could also use it just as a general discussion on putting things away in the classroom after students were done using them and putting them back were they belong—rather than just on a big stack. I could use this book in math class with talking about grouping things and the different ways to group different objects. I could use this book in English class and we could talk about the rhyming words and build that discussion into poetry. Another topic this book briefly mentions is sharing. So we could discuss the idea of sharing their things with other students.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a beginning reader book. Most of these books are blah. For whatever reason, I rather enjoyed this one. A girl is summoned to clean her room by her mother. It's such a mess, but once she gets going, she begins to see how she can sort her things. It's cute, particularly the ending.

For a beginning reader book, I recommend this one.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

We think this book is so cute. We love it so much. But, I just don't get why there have to be academic exercises in the back. Just read and enjoy that what we did-what we always do.

[Takeisha Hannor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book to teach about math.It has rhyming words and it teaches children about more than and less than.

[Frances · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute. It rhymes and you learn how to sort things in different ways, but it ends in a cliffhanger!