nerd teacher [books] reviewed Ada Lovelace by María Isabel Sánchez Vergara (Little People, Big Dreams, #10)
These are useful.
3 stars
I used this book, among others in the series, in a unit about biographies for seventh grade. Even among my seventh graders, who initially were annoyed that I'd brought them children's books, they found this set quite enjoyable (and wanted to make their own). From a teacher-perspective, these are super-helpful as ways to build student recognition of how images are used to tell stories (information within the picture, messages from parts of the image, symbolism, etc) and how we tell stories to make them easy for younger children to digest.
However, this book is annoying because all the maths in the illustrations... is ridiculous? They're talking about how Ada was a mathematician, and the most complex math they have there is... addition. I know it's a book for kids, but even they can recognise complicated maths as a concept (even if they don't understand it -- that would be a …
I used this book, among others in the series, in a unit about biographies for seventh grade. Even among my seventh graders, who initially were annoyed that I'd brought them children's books, they found this set quite enjoyable (and wanted to make their own). From a teacher-perspective, these are super-helpful as ways to build student recognition of how images are used to tell stories (information within the picture, messages from parts of the image, symbolism, etc) and how we tell stories to make them easy for younger children to digest.
However, this book is annoying because all the maths in the illustrations... is ridiculous? They're talking about how Ada was a mathematician, and the most complex math they have there is... addition. I know it's a book for kids, but even they can recognise complicated maths as a concept (even if they don't understand it -- that would be a visual signifier of difficulty). The diversity of maths is so... minimal.