31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Math Books for Kids

Math! It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The perfection of it. Its logic. Cadences. Sublime applications. And yes, many a fine teacher, librarian and bookseller fears it (many of us were English majors after all). Even so, you can’t help but respect the talents of the authors on display today. These are people who have found ways to meld mathematical concepts to kid-friendly texts. Not just kid-friendly either… legitimately good texts! I have infinite loads of respect for anyone who is capable of using both the left and right sides of their brains for books like the ones I am highlighting here today.

Naturally, if you’re in search of good math books your first stop should be the Mathical Book Prize site, where you can see all the winners. After that, check out my selections here today. Please note that these cover books from ages 0-12. I’ll try to indicate an age range for each title.

You can find a PDF of today’s list here.

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2024 Math Books for Kids

Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and Other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities by Stephanie Gibeault, ill. Jaclyn Sinquett

Age range: 10 and up. If you know me then you know that I like a little math in my children’s literature. And, of course, math is something that, when taught incorrectly, leads to children’s librarians avoiding it like the plague. That’s why I love books like this one. The math is there. I mean, no one’s hiding it, but thanks to the topics and the art by Jaclyn Sinquett, it’s darn fun. Essentially, the book examines five instances where animals in the natural world showcase math skills. But what Gibeault does, and what I really love, is that she introduces the concept first, and then shows how one can test animals to see whether or not they understand it instinctively themselves. This includes counting, addition, integers, and more. Lots of lovely activities are in there to do with kids, but it’s also just a really fun look at each of these mathematical concepts. 

Ernö Rubik and His Magic Cube by Kerry Aradhya, ill. Kara Kramer

Age Range: 5-9. A fan of puzzles, Ernö Rubik wondered if he could build a big cube made of smaller cubes that moved around and stayed connected. The true story behind one of our favorite, brain-bending toys. Y’all know that I’ve a weakness for any book that integrates math in a fun way, and I’d say this supremely fascinating book about the guy who came up with the Rubik’s Cube fits the bill. Part of what makes this book so interesting is the concept of someone trying to come up with something that’s never existed before, but that anyone could play with. I’m still a little fuzzy on how precisely a Rubik’s Cube actually, physically works but this book does a good job of explaining it as best as it possibly can. And I absolutely love that Ernö hadn’t really considered the idea of “solving” the cube when he first came up with it. If kids are looking for biographies of people who are still alive today, consider this one of the very few math-related bios of such a subject. Fun and strange.

The Great Mathemachicken: Sing High, Sing Crow by Nancy Krulik, ill. Charlie Alder

Age Range: 7-9. Though it’s certainly the third so far, there’s nothing about this particular entry in the Mathemachicken series that doesn’t stand on its own. Each Mathemachicken book shows our heroine, Chirpy, solving problems with math. In this particular case, it’s the math of music. Whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes, to be specific. Part of what I’ve always liked so much about the books is how the math is naturally integrated into the storytelling. When math is separated out into its own little boxes or inserts, it feels as though that math is always separate from our day-to-day lives. And as this story of obnoxious crows shows, that is simply not the case. In this story, a group calling themselves the Crow Family Band have a particular yen for keeping the chickens down below up all night with their music. Chirpy devises a sleepy solution, but it will require the other chickens to understand the rudimentary math basics behind notes. Oddly, the backmatter is not math-related at all but craft related, which seems a bit of a missed opportunity. Even so, it’s probably one of the more successful math-related early chapter book series out there. 

Imagine Counting All the Stars by Raewyn Caisley, ill. Gabriel Evans

Age Range: 4-6. If you’re going to work math into your book, why not put your back into it? This is the story of Maddie who has a mind inclined towards parallel lines, fractions, patterns, and more. Trouble is, she just doesn’t fit in with the other kids. When she has playdates, the other girls are all about dolls, not constructing perfect circles, cones, and cylinders. Fortunately, Maddie is lucky enough to meet Priya, and at a nearby observatory the two of them click perfectly thanks to a love of space and science and math, all combined. We get a lot of picture book biographies about girls like Maddie and Priya, but not a ton of fictional picture books. There’s something about this story’s easygoing nature that’s going to reassure a lot of kids out there that they’re not alone when they realize how much they prefer some subjects to others. This probably could have stood a little backmatter or, at the very least, a brief glossary, but I’m not going to ding it. A tale about finding your people. 

Look by Gabi Snyder, ill. Samantha Cotterill

Glancing at this cover you’d never believe that this was a math book, but if my time on the Mathical Book Prize committee taught me anything, pattern recognition in young children is most definitely a part of coming to love and understand math. And this book is all about patterns, particularly those found in nature. It’s on the younger side, so don’t expect long discussions of fractals or anything. More, it’s about inspiring a love of math in nature naturally. That might be noticing color patterns, designs, circles, zigzags, and more. All this is displayed with Cotterill’s remarkable cut paper and illustration style. She gets such life and depth into her images this way. And the shadows! Can we talk a little bit about how good she is at creating realistic shadows? There’s a shot in this book of a street scene with a taxi car driving down the street and just from the light alone you can tell what time of day it is, simply from the angle of the shadows. The backmatter includes patterns, pattern types, and even some pattern activities as well. A winner!

The Reindeer Remainders by Katey Howes, ill. Marie Hermansson

Ages Range: 4-7. This one caught me by surprise. First off, normally I have a hard time separating reindeer from Christmas picture books. This one, however, is more interested in how close the word “reindeer” is to “remainder”. It’s one of the cleverer stories about remainders out there too. Normally there are twelve reindeer in Miss Feathers’ class, but with the addition of a thirteenth, things start to get tricky. When the class is told to separate into pairs, there’s a “remain-deer” of one. When they’re asked to get into groups of three, once again there’s a different “remain-deer” left over. The book does this very simply, but also with a very clear visualization of each case where someone gets left out. It sort of links the emotions that one has when unpaired to the math. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a happy one, and there’s a nice bit of backmatter that dares to talk about prime numbers as well as the social-emotional state of being the one left on the sidelines. A success in both math and emotions.

A Tour of the Human Body: Amazing Numbers – Fantastic Facts by Jennifer Berne, ill. Dawn DeVries Sokol

Age Range: 9-12. I’ve heard a lot over the years about kids that love narrative nonfiction versus the kids that prefer expository nonfiction. This book falls squarely into the latter category, no question. It’s the kind of book that relishes large numbers. Some of this may be familiar to the adults looking it over, like the fact that newborn babies have more bones than adult humans do. But then there are the other facts. Your nose can recognize up to 1 trillion different odors. Every day you are 1/3rd of an inch shorter at the end of the day than you were in the morning. Or there are 15,000 hair cells in your coclea. It’s very much a facts-on-the-page kind of title, but I also appreciate that it reads like a combination of math and science in the most interesting way. Maybe it’s more numbers-based than math-based, but it’s worth consideration just the same. 

A Treasure of Measures by Mike Downs, ill. Joy Hwang Ruiz

Again, I’m so grateful for the time when I served on the Mathical Book Prize committee. I came into that work with a good knowledge of what made a successful picture book, and came away from it with a much more expansive understanding of what can be called a “math book”. As I said before, it’s not just enough to show counting or shapes. A good math book takes into consideration the best ways to instill a love of math. Take units of measurement, for example. Mike Downs, in his uniquely playful way, considers all the different things that one CAN measure, and then considers the other ways in which those same measurements can be calculated. For example, you can measure rain in decibels (lots of nice definitions of terms appear at the back of the book) but also by counting the drops, or measuring the puddles “with skips and with hops”. Oh, and he’s also rhyming this entire time, which sort of feels like he was setting himself up for extra homework. Whatever the reason, the book works, and is a wonderful introduction to math concepts at a really basic level.  Previously seen on the Rhyming List.

Yumbo Gumbo by Keila V. Dawson, Katie Crumpton

I am so pleased that the Storytelling Math series is coming out in both English and Spanish these days. So remember librarians, if someone comes to you asking for math-based picture books in Spanish, you have at least one resource right here at your fingertips. Warning: Do not read this book on an empty stomach. The “Storytelling Math” series from Charlesbridge is one of the very few from a major publisher to actually focus primarily and exclusively on math. But what makes the series so good is that they cover so much more than counting and subtracting. They delve into pattern recognition, and size comparison and, in this particular case, voting, data, and problem solving. It’s actually one of the cleverer books on the subject I’ve seen, and that’s entirely apart from all the delicious gumbo on its pages. In this story Annabelle is learning to cook gumbo but she wants to make it with okra. Her brother (who, to my mind anyway, is correct) thinks okra is too slimy and wants chicken gumbo. When Annabelle takes a vote from her family, she finds it’s three to three. The introduction of seafood gumbo sounds like the solution, except that then the vote becomes two to two to two. The solution? Annabelle has everyone vote on their least favorite. And when that happens, the vote is split in a good way between chicken and okra. Seafood wins! Backmatter delves into the history of gumbo itself, a glossary of some of the Louisiana Creole terms that pepper the text, info on the math and even a “Try This” section care of Dr. Yvelyne Germain-McCarthy (a Consultant and Professor Emerita of Mathematics Education) on voting with your own family. I never really thought of voting as a math related activity, but this book has definitely convinced me otherwise. Previously seen on the Bilingual List.

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So with all that in mind, here are the other lists for 2024:

December 1 – Great Board Books

December 2 – Picture Book Readalouds

December 3 – Simple Picture Book Texts

December 4 – Transcendent Holiday Picture Books

December 5 – Rhyming Picture Books

December 6 – Funny Picture Books

December 7 – CaldeNotts

December 8 – Picture Book Reprints

December 9 – Bilingual Books for Kids

December 10 – Math Books for Kids

December 11 – Books with a Message / Social Emotional Learning

December 12 – Fabulous Photography

December 13 – Translated Picture Books

December 14 – Fairy Tales / Folktales / Religious Tales

December 15 – Wordless Picture Books

December 16 – Poetry Books

December 17 – Unconventional Children’s Books

December 18 – Easy Books & Early Chapter Books

December 19 – Comics & Graphic Novels

December 20 – Older Funny Books

December 21 – Science Fiction Books

December 22 – Fantasy Books

December 23 – Informational Fiction

December 24 – Gross Books

December 25 – Science & Nature Books

December 26 – Unique Biographies

December 27 – Blueberry Award Contenders (Celebrating the Environment)

December 28 – Nonfiction Picture Books

December 29 – Nonfiction Books for Older Readers

December 30 – Middle Grade Novels

December 31 – Picture Books

Filed under: 31 Days 31 Lists, Best Books, Best Books of 2024