The Great Alphabet Adventure

The Great Alphabet Adventure
Author: Julia Flood
Publisher:
Total Pages: 37
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Children's plays
ISBN: 9780876023884

On a rainy afternoon, Alex comes home from school looking forward to playing video games before his mom gets home from work. When the power goes out and his only entertainment option is to read, Alex feels certain that he will die of boredom. Enter Zora, the new girl next door who is determined to go on an adventure. Zora discovers that Alex's old picture book, The Great Alphabet Adventure, is mysteriously blank and that their job as explorers will be to find the missing letters and return them to the book. Alex's ordinary room begins to reveal extraordinary hidden worlds and a cast of colorful and wacky characters who lead Alex, Zora and the audience on a treasure hunt through the alphabet. In the end, Alex and Zora learn something about the fun of reading and about the value of friendship."--Page 4 of cover.

Alex's Adventures in Numberland

Alex's Adventures in Numberland
Author: Alex Bellos
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2010-04-05
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1408811146

A tenth anniversary edition of the iconic book about the wonderful world of maths Sunday Times bestseller | Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 'Original and highly entertaining' Sunday Times 'A page turner about humanity's strange, never easy and, above all, never dull relationship with numbers' New Scientist 'Will leave you hooked on numbers' Daily Telegraph In this richly entertaining and accessible book, Alex Bellos explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks, and demonstrates the remarkable ways it's linked to our everyday lives. Alex explains the surprising geometry of the 50p piece, and the strategy of how best to gamble it in a casino. He shines a light on the mathematical patterns in nature, and on the peculiar predictability of random behaviour. He eats a potato crisp whose revolutionary shape was unpalatable to the ancient Greeks, and he shows the deep connections between maths, religion and philosophy. From the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany to numerologists in the US desert, from a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan to venerable Hindu sages in India, these dispatches from 'Numberland' are an unlikely but exhilarating cocktail of history, reportage and mathematical proofs. The world of maths is a much friendlier and more colourful place than you might have imagined. This anniversary edition is fully revised and updated.