Reviews

Grandfather Tang's Story by Robert Andrew Parker, Ann Tompert

allen_h's review against another edition

4.0

This book contains a story within a story. Little Soo is sitting with her grandfather under a tree, and they each have a set of tangrams. The each make a fox out of their tangrams, and then the grandfather tells a story about the fox friends. In the story the foxes keep changing their forms into other animals, and they keep trying to outdo the other. The story becomes one of survival as the creatures try to eat each other, but in the end both of them return to their fox shapes and continue their friendship.

I like this book because it shows creativity utilizing a common math manipulative. It also ends well, and I like stories with happy endings.

This book could be used in math to introduce some common shapes. Students could also be encouraged to use tangrams and their imaginations to create different things. They could then write a story contains their creations.

ashimmer13's review against another edition

4.0

Tangrams are great for storytelling!

iymain's review

5.0

This book is so fun! The story is action packed with messages about games that get out of hand and true friendship. This story is told within another sweet story about a girl and her grandfather. I took the time to make the tangrams with my daughter and it was a lot of fun. It slowed the pace of the story a bit and gave us a chance to fiddle around with geometry. At the conclusion of the book, the author has written a micro-history of tangrams and included some information about Chinese folklore, specifically, fairy foxes. How cool are Fairy Foxes? With life spans of up to 1000 years! Neat.