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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Young Robert's dreams have taken a decided turn for the weird. Instead of falling down holes and such, he's visiting a bizarre magical land of number tricks with the number devil as his host. Starting at one and adding zero and all the rest of the numbers, Robert and the number devil use giant furry calculators, piles of coconuts, and endlessly scrolling paper to introduce basic concepts of numeracy, from interesting number sequences to exponents to matrices. Author Hans Magnus Enzensberger's dry humour and sense of wonder will keep you and your kids entranced while you learn (shhh!) mathematical principles. Who could resist the little red guy who calls prime numbers "prima donnas", irrational numbers "unreasonable", and roots "rutabagas"? Not that the number devil is without his devilish qualities. He loses his temper when Robert looks for the easy way out of a number puzzle or dismisses maths as boring and useless. "What do you expect?" he asks. "I'm the number devil, not Santa Claus." (Ages 10 to adult) --Therese Littleton
Review
Already an international best seller this book has universal appeal and will interest both those who have always found mathematics mystifying and lovers of all things numerical. The story revolves around Robert, an average 12-year-old who finds the maths presented by his uninspiring schoolteacher boring and difficult. One night, instead of his unusual disturbing dreams, something amazing happens. Robert meets a new and vibrant character, who introduces himself as the number devil. This strange little man sets about winning Robert over to the wonderful world of numbers, where anything is possible and all is comprehensible.'The thing that makes numbers so devilish is precisely that they are simple. And you don't need a calculator to prove it.' Building on basic concepts, the number devil attempts to give his audience some simple keys to unlock the mysteries that can make mathematical puzzles so frightening. The reader is carried along by the imaginative flair with which the author tells his story. Colourful and humorous cartoons are scattered throughout the pages, as are the tables, charts and other numerical illustrations that bring text to life. A book that should be read by every secondary school child and would work well alongside the curriculum as a complementary learning tool, it breathes new life into a complex and daunting subject. (Kirkus UK)
Robert's not too happy when a diminutive number devil visits him in a dream - "If you give me some homework in my dream, I'll scream bloody murder! That's child abuse!" - but his opinion changes over the course of a dozen nights, as the devil shows him how to make numbers hop, introduces "unreasonable," "prima-donna," and "Bonacci" numbers, draws number triangles with all sorts of marvelous qualities, discusses one, zero, and infinity, and at the end delivers a dinner invitation to Number Heaven (which is also Number Hell), where Robert meets such mathematical eminences as Lord Rustle (as in Bertrand) and Dr. Happy Little (Felix Klein, inventor of the Klein Bottle), then has dessert - pie, of course. Berner adds plenty of full-color cartoon vignettes and charts; the author supplies several additional exercises for readers, and ends with translations of his quirky terminology and a long index of the concepts he so cleverly introduces. A natural follow-up to Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) and Jon Scieszka's Math Curse (1995), covering more mathematical territory - with less plot - than either, but sharing the same daffy sensibility. (Kirkus Reviews)
See all Product Description
Young Robert's dreams have taken a decided turn for the weird. Instead of falling down holes and such, he's visiting a bizarre magical land of number tricks with the number devil as his host. Starting at one and adding zero and all the rest of the numbers, Robert and the number devil use giant furry calculators, piles of coconuts, and endlessly scrolling paper to introduce basic concepts of numeracy, from interesting number sequences to exponents to matrices. Author Hans Magnus Enzensberger's dry humour and sense of wonder will keep you and your kids entranced while you learn (shhh!) mathematical principles. Who could resist the little red guy who calls prime numbers "prima donnas", irrational numbers "unreasonable", and roots "rutabagas"? Not that the number devil is without his devilish qualities. He loses his temper when Robert looks for the easy way out of a number puzzle or dismisses maths as boring and useless. "What do you expect?" he asks. "I'm the number devil, not Santa Claus." (Ages 10 to adult) --Therese Littleton
Review
Already an international best seller this book has universal appeal and will interest both those who have always found mathematics mystifying and lovers of all things numerical. The story revolves around Robert, an average 12-year-old who finds the maths presented by his uninspiring schoolteacher boring and difficult. One night, instead of his unusual disturbing dreams, something amazing happens. Robert meets a new and vibrant character, who introduces himself as the number devil. This strange little man sets about winning Robert over to the wonderful world of numbers, where anything is possible and all is comprehensible.'The thing that makes numbers so devilish is precisely that they are simple. And you don't need a calculator to prove it.' Building on basic concepts, the number devil attempts to give his audience some simple keys to unlock the mysteries that can make mathematical puzzles so frightening. The reader is carried along by the imaginative flair with which the author tells his story. Colourful and humorous cartoons are scattered throughout the pages, as are the tables, charts and other numerical illustrations that bring text to life. A book that should be read by every secondary school child and would work well alongside the curriculum as a complementary learning tool, it breathes new life into a complex and daunting subject. (Kirkus UK)
Robert's not too happy when a diminutive number devil visits him in a dream - "If you give me some homework in my dream, I'll scream bloody murder! That's child abuse!" - but his opinion changes over the course of a dozen nights, as the devil shows him how to make numbers hop, introduces "unreasonable," "prima-donna," and "Bonacci" numbers, draws number triangles with all sorts of marvelous qualities, discusses one, zero, and infinity, and at the end delivers a dinner invitation to Number Heaven (which is also Number Hell), where Robert meets such mathematical eminences as Lord Rustle (as in Bertrand) and Dr. Happy Little (Felix Klein, inventor of the Klein Bottle), then has dessert - pie, of course. Berner adds plenty of full-color cartoon vignettes and charts; the author supplies several additional exercises for readers, and ends with translations of his quirky terminology and a long index of the concepts he so cleverly introduces. A natural follow-up to Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) and Jon Scieszka's Math Curse (1995), covering more mathematical territory - with less plot - than either, but sharing the same daffy sensibility. (Kirkus Reviews)
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