Edgar Allan Poe’s Pie
Bibliography: Lewis, J. P., & Slack, M. H. (2012).EDGAR ALLAN POE’S PIE: MATH PUZZLERS IN CLASSIC POEMS. Harcourt Mifflin Harcourt.
ISBN:9780545560085
Plot Summary: The poet J. Patrick Lewis has reimagined classic Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and added a dash of academics…specifically math. Between the silly parodies and the wonderfully wacky art, kids will have so much fun figuring out the puzzles, they won't even know they're learning math. Answers appear unobtrusively on each page, and engaging information about the original poets is included. Math games and concepts, poetry and poet biographies--it's all so cleverly put together. This funny book is a treat for fans of words and numbers alike.
Critical Analysis: The book contains many different poems that add a mathematical twist to Edgar Allan Poe’s classics. The first poem in the anthology is Edgar Allan Poe’s Apple Pie whose illustrations display a huge apple pie with a knife in it. If you look carefully there are 2 raven feet on top. The reader can assume the poem was inspired by, “The Raven.” The answers to the problems within the poems are found in the bottom of the page. Readers will be drawn to solve riddle-like problems as they are reading.
The colorful illustrations are very modern. They are very noticeable because they are very large and take up almost the entire page. This book would be more appropriate for a middle school audience, specifically for the math enthusiasts because of the math problems within the poetry. Students should have a pencil and paper ready to solve the problems as they are reading.
Review Excerpt(s): “Inspired by the works of different poets, from Poe to Silverstein, each of fourteen poems suggests a brain-teasing math question with the answer (and the arithmetic required to solve it) provided, upside down on the right-hand page. The level of difficulty fluctuates wildly. Biographical information about the poets is appended. Slack's over-the-top digitally created cartoon art adds an air of outright hilarity.”- Horn Book
“Though it's a bit of a gamble that mixing poetry with math will make either any less baffling, Lewis' grab bag of classic poems rewritten to include numbers puzzlers has an undeniably fun spirit. The math ranges from simple (asking how many cuts it takes to make 10 pie pieces in a reworking of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven") to muddied (in the spin on A. A. Milne's "Us Two," the line "eight plus two times two" can really go in either of two ways) to downright challenging (asking kids to calculate the tax on a train ticket, and then a tip on the ticket plus tax, in the poem inspired by Langston Hughes' "April Rain Song"). Slack's ebullient artwork matches the goofy tone of the poems, and the answers to each problem are printed upside-down on each spread. This book could come in handy for a variety of different classroom purposes, but confirmed "mathletes" are probably the best bet for an audience.”-ALA Booklist
Connection:
*Students can determine the mood and theme of the poems and make connections to them.
*Students will be able to make mathematical connections and write about what the poems remind them of.
*Students can write a math riddle and try to make it rhyme like the poems in the book.
Other titles of books that are similar to this genre:
Lewis, J. P., Florian, D., & Holmes, J. (2014). POEM-MOBILES:CRAZY CAR POEMS.
ISBN 978-0375866906
Comments
Post a Comment