Book Report: Math Curse

40. Jon Scieszka, with illustrations by Lane Smith, Math Curse (1995) (1/10/19)

I got around to working on the garage today—the half with boxes of books—and at the bottom of a box full of natural history guides and essay collections I found three larger-format books, all of which I will now proceed to review. The first that I (re)read was Math Curse. What a delight!

It concerns a child whose math teacher, Mrs. Fibonacci, says one Monday, "YOU KNOW, you can think of almost everything as a math problem...." Turn the page and, perhaps inevitably: On Tuesday I started having problems. They kick off first thing:

I wake up at 7:15. It takes me 10 minutes to get dressed, 15 minutes to eat my breakfast, and 1 minute to brush my teeth.
SUDDENLY, it's a problem:
1. If my bus leaves at 8:00, will I make it on time?
2. How many minutes in 1 hour?
3. How many teeth in 1 mouth?

Getting dressed proves to be a math problem ("How many shirts would I have if I threw away that awful plaid shirt?" is one pointed question). Breakfast is such a problem that the child ends up going hungry, overwhelmed by the number of cereal flakes in a bowl.

The whole morning is one problem after another.
There are 24 kids in my class.
I just know someone is going to bring in cupcakes to share.

Lunch presents a fraction problem by way of pizza. Social studies becomes a problem about measuring the 4,000 km long Mississippi River—using 1 cm long M&Ms. English is a word problem. Even Art turns into a connect-the-ancient-Mayan-numerals problem. "Math is just a total problem," and at the end of the day—someone remembers that they brought cupcakes! Twenty-four of them, for twenty-four students—but how to share them with Mrs. Fibonacci without some gnarly fractions entering in? Our hero finds a way, fortunately.

Dinner brings no relief, and then there are the nightmares:

I dream I'm trapped in a room with no doors and no windows. The room is covered with a lifetime of problems. I have only one piece of chalk. How do I get out? I'M ABOUT to give up and die, when the answer to my problem comes to me. Fractions. I break the chalk in half. Then I put the two halves together. One half plus one half equals one whole.
     I put the hole on the wall and jump out.
     I'M FREE.

The next morning, the original problem about getting dressed and catching the bus is a breeze! No problem! The math curse is broken!

Oh but wait. In science class, Mr. Newton says, "YOU KNOW, you can think of almost everything as a science experiment..."

The math problems alternate between real and silly. The art alternates between fairly simple and frenetic. There is so much to look at in the illustrations. This book is simply a whole lot of fun.

Here is an interview with the illustrator, Lane Smith (not about this book specifically, but it's interesting anyway).

And here are a few of the spreads (the final one being what is quoted above):