ABSOLUTELY ONE THING

Little Lola tries to get scrambled eggs out of some simple math. She succeeds very nicely.

Child returns with her two siblings, Charlie and Lola. By their grasp of numbers, Charlie might be in fourth grade and Lola may be in kindergarten. They are going to the store, and their mother says they may choose one thing. “One thing each,” Charlie asks, “or one thing between two?”— just so there is no misunderstanding. “EACH,” is Mom’s reply. There is much dilly-dallying and brushing of teeth and counting of dots on Lola’s dress, jokes about “half of a second” and the number of socks “fifty or twenty-seventeen” ladybugs might need. There actually is some usable math randomly squirreled away in these pages, which feature two pretty charming creatures, plenty of lemony yellows, hot reds, and grass greens, typefaces enough to please a hyperactive typesetter, and even a few long equations that can be followed to some satisfaction. But these are mostly numbers as fun—“Or a squillion?”—numbers to roll around in your mouth, then chew and swallow to feed your imagination.

Yes, there is still math anxiety, and yes, there is still a need, as in this attractively low-key effort, to treat numbers as other than an outbreak of Ebola.