Big Numbers

by Edward Packard

Uses illustrations of exponentially increasing peas to present the concept of numbers from one to a million, billion, trillion.

Genres: Mathematics, Picture Books

32 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2000

About the author

Edward Packard attended and graduated from both Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was one of the first authors to explore the idea of gamebooks, in which the reader is inserted as the main character and makes choices about the direction the story will go at designated places in the text.

The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well.

In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.

Reviews

[Anna Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story summary: this book is about a boy who needs help counting large numbers and he uses peas to help show his dog what they look like.
Grade: 2nd-5th
Classroom: mathematics
Individual: those who needs visuals would benefit from this
Small group: actually taking peas and doing the numbers with the books
Whole class:, introduction to mathematics and counting with visuals
Related: any mathematical books
Multimedia: audio books

[Courtney Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teaching number concepts (1, 10, 100, 1000, etc) to children using peas. Large book with vibrant cartoon illustrations that clearly show the difference a million is to 1. My favorite line from the book is, "Ten is an important number because we have ten fingers and ten toes." This book also answered really good questions: "If there were a mountain of peas, wouldn't they get squashed down by their own weight? They certainly would. But to keep this book from getting too complicated, we imagined that all the peas stayed the same size." Informational book.

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to love this book but didn’t

I’ve taught from preschool to eighth grade

This is depicted as a storybook but doesn’t lend itself well to a read aloud

Complex concept of exponents

Author attempts to connect size with something tangible
Kudos for the effort

Young ones just get lost

It’s not a piece I’d recommend adding

Videos tend to say this quicker in a more understood manner for young students

[Josiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Complicated math tends to really set my head spinning. To tell the truth, relatively simple math usually has the same effect on me. I was interested in seeing how a math whiz like Edward Packard (and all one has to do to realize that he is indeed a whiz is to read one of his Choose Your Own Adventure books dealing with the unfathomable complexities of time and space) would present the concepts of really huge numbers to an audience of readers first coming to grips with the magnitude of our universe.

Edward Packard condenses the mode of learning about these gigantic numbers into the manageable picture of a plate of little green peas. One pea is small, and so are ten, and a hundred, and even a thousand. What's it like to have a million peas on your plate, though, or a hundred million, or a trillion, or a quadrillion? The illustrations work with the text to display some semblance of what it all might look like, as those seemingly innocuous peas increase to such massive numbers that they eventually overrun the whole town. Along with the constant example of the peas, a few other enlightening visuals are thrown into the mix, like the massive number of a particular insect or animal lined up in a row that it would take to circumnavigate the earth, or to stretch from the earth to the moon.

All of this is written in a lively, interesting way, with a good amount of humor involved the entire time. Big Numbers is a truly funny book that delivers big ideas in an innovative style that will have great appeal for most people interested in giving the book a try. All in all, I would certainly consider giving two and a half stars to this book.

[Sara Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too bad there isn't a pic for this book. It is really cool and a great way to teach exponents and powers of ten. NCTM would like this one......great number sense!!!!!

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this to explore the idea of big #s with a 6th grader. He liked the book because it was funny and he thought it helped him learn exponents.

[Sheila Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

the adventures that I went through when I was bored I just read these books over and over again you would never get to the end of the story.