How Many Jelly Beans? by Andrea Menotti, illustrated by Yancey Labat

Released in April 2012.

I cannot count how many dismal number and math books I have read over the years.  I’m lucky enough to have a mathematical kid, but finding books that he would enjoy was painful.  Many math books are a lot more about concept than about being fun to read.  Well, not this one!  This one winningly mixes math with candy, so that even non-mathematical kids will give it a try.  Aiden and Emma are just like most siblings, they are trying to get more than each other.  So when Emma asks for 10 jelly beans, Aiden asks for 20!  And the number just keep climbing from there.  Soon, they are up to 500 jelly beans, which may be way too many to eat.  But how about 1000 or 5000 or 10,000 in a year?  The jelly beans get smaller and smaller until the final number of 1 million is reached only be an enormous fold-out page. 

This visual sweet treat will get children able to truly visualize what the difference between thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and a million are.  The art by Labat done in black and white with only the jelly beans for tantalizing color really works.  The focus is on the candy and the number.  Menotti nicely inserts division into the conversation too, when the children debate how many jelly beans they could eat in a year. 

I can see this over-sized book inspiring lots of counting, adding, dividing and multiplying in families, or it is also a very sweet book to share with your number-loving kid.  Appropriate for ages 5-7. 

An aside just for librarians, please don’t put this in the remoteness of the nonfiction section with your math books.  Let it enjoy being taken home as a yummy picture book with a jelly bean and math center.

Reviewed from copy received from Chronicle Books.