Mission: Addition

by Loreen Leedy

Animal students learn about addition from the world around them.

Genres: Mathematics, Picture Books, Nonfiction, Childrens, Addition, Education, 1st Grade

32 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Loreen Leedy is the author and illustrator of over 40 picture books with math, science, language arts, and other curriculum content. Her books showcase information in a kid-friendly format, often with characters and entertaining stories.

Honors and awards for her books include: ALA Notable Book, Science Books and Films finalist, Reading Rainbow feature book, Chicago Library Best of the Best, many Scholastic Book Fair selections, Florida Book Award, Parent's Choice Award, many Junior Library Guild selections, and Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association.

Loreen has spoken at hundreds of schools and many conferences such as the International Reading Association, the American Library Association, the Mazza Summer Conference, and the UVU Engaged Reading Forum.

She lives in central Florida with her husband Andy, who is a scientist and a cat named Knickers who has an easily triggered purrometer. They love to travel, read, and watch movies.

Reviews

[Trish]

This is a fun book about addition.This si good for kids just starting to add.

[Kenna Jacobs]

This book is about a group of animal students that go on an adventure and learn about different math concepts and solve problems along the way. They start off with simple concepts such as what addition is, the plus and equal signs, and how to add small numbers in different ways. The characters also provide multiple fun scenarios for students to practice solving. Next, the animals start learning about place value and adding multiple digit numbers and more than two numbers at a time. The story continues by going through different scenarios like adding up survey results, adding up scores in a game, adding prices to figure out a total, and more. Finally, the end of the book explains the importance of checking your work using multiple methods of addition and also provides an answer key to each of the problems in the book.
There were pages in this book that allowed students to create a problem by only knowing the whole amounts (like how many animals were in a picture) and then figuring out how many of each animal type there was. This would be an example of the “both parts unknown” structure. The other structure that was used in the majority of the book was the “whole unknown” structure. On almost every page, students are provided with example problems and scenarios where they are given each of the parts and have to solve for the whole. “Mission: Addition” provides example scenarios to demonstrate how to check your work and also asks students for other ideas on how to do so. This gives teachers an opportunity to discuss the different strategies to solve addition problems and how they can be used to check your work as well. I can definitely see myself using this book in my future classroom because I want to teach lower graders like K-2 and think this book is perfect for those levels. This book has a lot of activity examples within itself. I think it would be fun and engaging to pick a part of the book, such as the yard sale, and have students create their own yard sale or shop using items in our room as well as giving them prices that they will need to add up as they buy them. This would be a great way to introduce the idea of budgeting and currency at a lower and more simplistic level! Overall a great book that I would recommend reading and using in your classroom!

[Lilly Foster]

This book is filled to the brim with quality content and entertaining visuals about addition inside and outside of the classroom, after learning about the basics of addition in Miss Prime’s classroom, her students continue to find ways to add and use addition strategies in their day-to-day lives. Miss Prime poses the addition problems as mysteries and that her students are the detectives on the case. Together they learn about adding larger numbers, using evidence (showing their work) to get to their answer, running totals, word problems, and even money addition. Even problems spread throughout the book can be solved by following along with answers at the end of the story.
I loved this book and I think it would be a great resource to have in the classroom. Although my original thought was to use it in a mini-lesson, I would also include it as a "display" book on my bookshelf. As a former student, I would have enjoyed a math book that was also interactive and incorporated problems into the story. I think it is super important to incorporate real-life connections and concepts into math for students understanding and this book does so wonderfully!

[Olivia Ehas]

What stood out about this book was the different stories that make up this book and the way you can use it in a classroom. It does a great job of walking you through the addition process, ranging from single-digit addition, addition with more than three single-digit numbers, and adding single and double-digit numbers. All of this is presented in a fun engaging way for kids. In terms of classroom application, it holds unique stories you can adapt to fit your students and your classroom. An example of this, based on one of the stories, is to have your child or students make their own word problems and have others solve them. Overall this book is engaging, helpful for those looking to teach addition, and can be adapted depending on the age.

[Xuewei Wu]

The illustrations are very helpful for students who start learning addition. In the book, the author shows the drawing and counting method. In the beginning, the author shows and explains the meaning of plus, minus sign and equal sign is always true. After the student learned +, -, = then show and teach the student how to say math in English sentence form. They use real-world problems such as using money to create questions and they solve the problem. The book is fascinating and engaging; it also includes the practice problem for students to solve. At the end of the book, provide an answer page or answer key for each math problem. I think it is more a practice book than a reading book.

[Becky B]

A collection of short graphic novel adventures involving solving math problems with a teacher and class.

This is the 2nd or 3rd Leedy math book I’ve read, and I have to say Leedy gets kudos for coming up with a engaging ways to teach math concepts in a picture book format. The short stories in this go from simple addition to adding more than 2 numbers to adding double digits and making word problems.

[Cambrie]

This concept picture book is a great way to give students a scenario that teaches basic addition in an interesting way. My favorite part was when the students figured out that the teacher had eaten the cookies and she used that to teach how addition worked. I would use this in my future classroom for independent reading, or for students who want to review addition basics that love to read.

[Silvia Ferrara]

This book was recommended as a pre-k math book in our homeschool curriculum. It’s age appropriate drawings and advanced information seemed to be out of sync for me. My son may have liked this book as a little math whiz, but my average level math second child only grasped the first two parts. It was a miss.

[Sarah]

Animals in a classroom solve addition problems in different scenarios with their super fun teacher. Kids will love the graphic novel and short stories format. Teachers will love the addition facts covered!

[Vo Khon]

ADDITION - APPLY REAL LIFE
It explains clearly how to addition.
Addend, sum and how to add multi-numbers.
How the beginner know to apply addition to the real life: check bill, add up time, activity.
Good book for learning addition with well drawing.

[Caitlyn Booth]

When teaching younger children how to add simple numbers, this is a great choice of book to incorporate into the lesson. It is about a teacher who is teaching her class to add numbers.

[Emilie Ross]

math
solving problems
mystery?
homework idea
small group idea

[Kelsey Wright]

good for teaching math to students in 1st grade or up

[KaitandMaddie]

Maddie loves math, so we read some math books. She loved them but said they are far too easy!

[Grace]

Kind of fun, engages kids with the concept of addition by using a premise of finding clues like a detective.

[Tasasha Battle]

Leedy's book is written in the setting of a classroom, however the twist is that it is a classroom of animals. Mrs. Prime, the teacher, has transformed her classroom into a discovery of solving mysteries using mathematics. She teaches them math symbols, writing equations and terminology through figuring who ate all the cookies. Also, they connected the terms addends and sum to this activity. This book can be used for the mathematical benefit of first and third graders. First grade can use this book to remind and prepared them for writing and producing equations. The associative property can also be understood in Mrs. Prime's class. In the activity of figuring how many different kind of animals she had as a pet. Leedy's book can also be used to teach third graders how to add a series of addition equations using the strategy of friendly numbers. This activity of figuring the variety of fruit on a painting can be furthered by teaching the students how to solve these equations using mental math. Throughout this book all students will be able to understand that math is all around them and every where.

[Inna Nako]

-this book describes different strategies used to solve addition problems
-put in colorful comic/graphic novel type style so it is engaging for students
-a fun activity that would go along with this book would be to play a review game where each child gets a symbol (= sign or + sign) or a strategy (2+3=5,3+2=5) and they would explain to the class what their specific addition term was (teacher will use differentation here, know who to give the more simple or more complex strategies)
-another fun game would be addition jeopardy before a unit test on addition

[Codie Gates]

In this book Miss Prime teaches 6 lessons all about addition. The setting of the book is in the classroom where the teacher teaches the lessons with the students involved. First is addition facts, adding big numbers, adding totals, adding money, adding during problem solving, and more adding money.It has vocabulary, pictures, and fun dialog between the characters. It explains things in a way that is very easy to understand.

[Sarah Ziskend]

Good for:
- teaching meaning of math signs (+,=,-)
-addition in the beginning (not good as an introduction though)
-introduces strategies for solving math: draw a picture, add 10s then 1s, multi step math problems, and checking your work
-introduces and defines math vocabulary such as: addends and sum
-cute structure of book with speech bubbles and dialog
-interesting art work that will keep the students engaged

[Olivia Bailey]

This math book teaches 6 lessons throughout the book. It is all about addition. The setting of the book is in the classroom where the teacher teaches the lessons with the students involved.
First is addition facts, adding big numbers, adding totals, adding money, adding during problem solving, and more adding money.

This is a good book for k and 1st grade students learning to add.

[Shannon Brasher]

Mission Addition takes very basic math concepts and turns them into fun, short picture stories which help children to understand the concept. The book discusses basic addition topics such as adding one and two digit numbers, adding multiple numbers, counting money, and word problems. This would be a fun book to have in a preschool or kindergarten classroom.

[Victoria Clay]

This book is interesting because it's written as a series of math conversations. The students get a chance to practice the math facts s they go along. Great for addition practice. I also like that it showed how addition can be used in diferent situations.

[Gianna Romo]

This book helps children realize that pretty much any object can be added. This book would be great as a read aloud before math workshop stations. The problems could be recreated and the children will be able to practice their number sense regarding addition.

[Rachel]

The characters in this book are on a mission to find addition. The book teaches children that addition is takes things and putting them together. In the book they review signs used in addition. I would encourage children to find objects around them to add. Great book to teach addition.

[Kaila]

This was a good read but it was more useful in small groups because of the structure of the book. We were still reviewing addition so it was beneficial in a way. However, I believe using this book as a read aloud is not the best idea. The students were not able to engage much.

[Lena Barnes]

This book is all about addition. She explains what addends and the sum are. The characters add all sorts of things throughout the book. It is a very fun and interactive book.

[Attwa]

I really enjoyed this book. It is a great for read alouds and the illustration is eye-catching!

[Michael D.]

Great book for teaching addition to young minds.

[Morgan Wright]

Teaches how to set up an addition problem using real life situations. This would be good for kindergarten and first grade.

[Amy]

A fun book about basic addition with a few addition puzzles for children to solve while you read.