We are so lucky to have so many wonderful libraries. Here on the peninsula we have more than a half dozen fantastic children’s rooms, complete with computers (the incentive for my children to go), rich book and music collections and comfy areas to sit and read. These are all within a 15 minute drive! All of the San Mateo County libraries are connected so it’s even more than we had in Berkeley.

Sometimes we find wonderful treasures and then we buy them. Like Sam’s Cookie by Barbro Lindgren and the Tickle Tickle series of board books by Helen Oxenbury. But some of them get returned and fade from memory.

So I thought I’d start mentioning them.

Anno’s Math Games
Mitsumasa Anno

The author is a japanese artist and educator whose work has received acclaim world wide. He is noted for making mathematical and scientific concepts accessible to children and for his interesting children’s book illustrations. For more: http://www.answers.com/topic/mitsumasa-anno

This Math Games book isn’t even mentioned in most of the bios I found about Mr. Anno. But Jared LOVED it. It is a PERFECT mathematical concepts book for pre-k and kindergartners. But don’t look for numbers or addition here.

It is about matching, and categorizing, and patterns and spatial relationships and measuring and charting and graphing. You know, how to THINK about math amd logic, not just memorizing functions and tables.

Jared loved it. Usually if I let Jared pick a book he goes straight for Berenstain Bears. He picked this one every night for 2 months. It is now overdue to the library and I better get it back. I’m really happy we found this gem right at this time. it was a perfect precursor to starting kindergarten.

(Jared is very worried about starting kindergarten because, while he knows addition ok, his “minus” isn’t very good and he doesn’t know multiplication at all! Horrors! Ethan’s kindergarten teacher Mrs. Franco says it’s always the smart ones who worry the most. Meanwhile, when I give him simple multiplication word problems he figures them out fine.)