THE GOOD NEIGHBORS STORE AN AWARD: A CHEESY MOUSE TALE OF ADDITION WITH REGROUPING
Author: Mark Ramsay
Illustrator: Susan G. Robinson
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Number of pages: 32
Publisher: Strategic Educational Tools (USA) First published in: 2009 Format: Picturebook Is the mathematical focus explicit in the story? Yes Is this story part of a mathematics story series? Yes (The Good Neighbors Math series) Preview and/or purchase this book on the Amazon websites: UK, USA, AUS, CAN Synopsis by the author/publisher
When The Good Neighbors each receive a cheesy award, some of the mice discover that they do not have enough room to store it all safely inside their houses. Can The Good Neighbors work together to solve their cheese storage problem? The mice's story models the addition with regrouping process as demonstrated with base ten blocks - the only book to teach the addition algorithm with base ten visual models. |
“Once home, I quickly saw a problem. I had twelve cubes! Do you know why having twelve cubes was a problem? [...] Tenor lit his cheese torch. He melted one side of a cube and stuck it to the next cube. He kept on melting and sticking cubes together until all ten cubes became one … CHEEESE STICK!”
Official review by MathsThroughStories.org:
Mark Ramsay’s ‘The Good Neighbors Store an Award: A Cheesy Mouse Tale of Addition with Regrouping’ (2009) is part of The Good Neighbors series, which creatively weaves the use of base ten blocks into the stories about a mouse, named Onesie and his neighbours, Tenor and Hund-Red, who all love cheese of varying amounts. While Onesie is perfectly happy with cheese cubes, Tenor loves cheese sticks (each stick is comprised of ten cheese cubes) and Hund-Red loves cheese slabs (each slab is comprised of ten cheese sticks). In ‘Store an Award’, when the mayor awards each of the three neighbours with five pieces of their favourite size of cheese for being helpful to one another, each neighbour has to figure out how to store their award as each of their house can store up to nine pieces of their favourite size of cheese only. Readers will learn the concept of addition with regrouping and place value as the story progresses. The page illustrations of the cheese cubes, cheese sticks and cheese slabs are very useful to help young readers visualise place value, and to help them become familiar with the use of base ten blocks. The mathematical questions (e.g. ‘Do you know why having twelve cubes was a problem?’), which are presented on almost every other page, can be useful for teachers and parents to know what questions to ask their children. However, at times, these questions can distract readers from the story. Additionally, the Cheesy Summary on the last two pages has the potential to be useful, but in its current form, it can be quite confusing, if not chaotic, particularly the visual representation of the cheese slabs, sticks and cubes. Finally, while the first eight pages of the story (around a third of the pages in the book) helpfully introduce the characters and set the scene, they are the same opening eight pages found in the other two stories in the series. Some readers who buy the 2-3 books in the series might prefer that this 8-page preamble be somehow summarised to a single page (inner cover?), freeing up valuable space to add the depth to each story. All in all, we highly recommend ‘The Good Neighbors Store an Award: A Cheesy Mouse Tale of Addition with Regrouping’ for children aged 6+ years old. (Disclaimer: We received a complimentary inspection copy of this book from the publisher)
Recommended age range:
6 years old +
Relevant mathematics topics:
Addition & Subtraction
Possible teaching activities:
At MathsThroughStories.org, we believe that stories can be meaningfully incorporated in mathematics teaching in different ways. Thus, we are inviting you to share your experience of how you have used this story in your mathematics lesson with other members of the community. By sharing your experience with us, you will be added to our team of On-line Contributors here, where you can also find our submission guideline.
Mark Ramsay’s ‘The Good Neighbors Store an Award: A Cheesy Mouse Tale of Addition with Regrouping’ (2009) is part of The Good Neighbors series, which creatively weaves the use of base ten blocks into the stories about a mouse, named Onesie and his neighbours, Tenor and Hund-Red, who all love cheese of varying amounts. While Onesie is perfectly happy with cheese cubes, Tenor loves cheese sticks (each stick is comprised of ten cheese cubes) and Hund-Red loves cheese slabs (each slab is comprised of ten cheese sticks). In ‘Store an Award’, when the mayor awards each of the three neighbours with five pieces of their favourite size of cheese for being helpful to one another, each neighbour has to figure out how to store their award as each of their house can store up to nine pieces of their favourite size of cheese only. Readers will learn the concept of addition with regrouping and place value as the story progresses. The page illustrations of the cheese cubes, cheese sticks and cheese slabs are very useful to help young readers visualise place value, and to help them become familiar with the use of base ten blocks. The mathematical questions (e.g. ‘Do you know why having twelve cubes was a problem?’), which are presented on almost every other page, can be useful for teachers and parents to know what questions to ask their children. However, at times, these questions can distract readers from the story. Additionally, the Cheesy Summary on the last two pages has the potential to be useful, but in its current form, it can be quite confusing, if not chaotic, particularly the visual representation of the cheese slabs, sticks and cubes. Finally, while the first eight pages of the story (around a third of the pages in the book) helpfully introduce the characters and set the scene, they are the same opening eight pages found in the other two stories in the series. Some readers who buy the 2-3 books in the series might prefer that this 8-page preamble be somehow summarised to a single page (inner cover?), freeing up valuable space to add the depth to each story. All in all, we highly recommend ‘The Good Neighbors Store an Award: A Cheesy Mouse Tale of Addition with Regrouping’ for children aged 6+ years old. (Disclaimer: We received a complimentary inspection copy of this book from the publisher)
Recommended age range:
6 years old +
Relevant mathematics topics:
Addition & Subtraction
Possible teaching activities:
At MathsThroughStories.org, we believe that stories can be meaningfully incorporated in mathematics teaching in different ways. Thus, we are inviting you to share your experience of how you have used this story in your mathematics lesson with other members of the community. By sharing your experience with us, you will be added to our team of On-line Contributors here, where you can also find our submission guideline.
