The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat

I have currently a 4th Grader and a 2nd grader, and my 2nd grader is very bright (I'll try not to brag, but I'm partial) and during lockdown is getting less work to do for school than his big brother. When my older son is working on something and his little brother wants to play, I sit my 2nd grader down and have him read a chapter of _Penrose_. While I should qualify that my younger son reads a little higher than his grade level, the stories are engaging in the way they're written, use pretty simple vocabulary, and are structured very much from a "cat-like" perspective that speaks to the animal lover in my son, so they spark the imagination in a clever way. We just read about the Fibonacci Rabbit, and both my boys (younger one told his big brother about the chapter) were soon wandering around the house trying to do the mental arithmetic to get the next number in the sequence. I actually bought this copy of _Penrose_ to donate to my kids' school, because I think lots of kids would enjoy these stories, I wish he'd been around when I was a kid, might have eased my math anxiety!

Excellent book by one of the best general math writers. I have all Thoni Pappas's books and calendars. Big fan of all her published materials. Too bad she retired a few years back. I really enjoyed her Mathematical Calendars as well. She did publish quite a bit over the years, so she has left a lot of great "Math Stuff" (another title of one of her books).

I bought this book for my six year old who adores maths - especially doing problems in her spare time. We read a chapter whenever she is in a maths mood and try the problems together. Her cat often lies on her work and she relates to Penrose. The stories are short and include plenty of conversation so make them suitable even for bedtime reading. This is not a book to read from cover to cover over a week but one to be dibbled in to when the mood takes. The chapters can be read in almost any order. If you have a maths hungry child who wants some extension ideas away from the dull number crunching of school, then this is a perfect book.

My girls loved this book! They are 9 and 12 years old, and we read it a couple of chapters a night at bedtime. Some chapters give you things to cut out or bigger puzzles that we would do the next day, but most were great for reading straight-up and doing the ending puzzles in our heads. The math was simple enough that it was truly fun, not school-ish. Much of it they'd seen before, but everything was presented in new, fun ways. Good stuff. The only downside is that the book contains more than a few grammar/punctuation issues. We almost made a game of discovering them as we read (the girls like to read along over my shoulder). The content is 100% terrific, and the writing errors were an unnecessary distraction. Little things, but distracting. I see there's a follow-up Penrose book ... here's to more bed-time reading!

This book is so delightful!! It follows cat named Penrose and his mathematical adventures. It presents math topics like base 2, Fibonacci sequences, fractals and more in a fun and easy to digest way. There are a few exercises or prompts for readers to apply the their new knowledge to a problem at the end of each chapter. I recommend this book and look forward to acquiring the next one in the series.

I teach a summer course to gifted 5th and 6th graders on Mathematical Logic, and purchased this book to use as supplemental material. It's excellent and covers many of the fun concepts I was hoping it'd cover, yet it makes it easy for 10-12 yr. olds to grasp them. I'm VERY happy that I got this book and it's one of the best math books for kids I've seen in awhile. I especially like that the format allows kids to read, discover, and do the activities themselves, without having to have a teacher guiding them through it.

With the Kindle Edition for Mac, you cannot make photo copies of the activity pages as needed. This book works much better as a hardcopy resource. The content of the book is great. It will be wonderful for teaching my children and exposing them to advanced concepts. Again, the 3 star rating is because the kindle for Mac interface is very awkward for this book, and there are parts you just can't use because there is no way get a worksheet.

Cute book that my son loves to read before bed. Teaches mathematical concepts through the eyes of a cat. My son is 5 and is a perfect age for the idea of cats talking to numbers and he loves the math concepts presented. He lays in bed talking about binary or drawing stars in polygons. I am very glad I bought this book, it is frequently requested and fun to read and talk about.

We have owned this book for almost four years now...which is why I was prompted to write a review. It is one of the books that my child keeps coming back to on a regular basis. The first time he read it, he was 6. It inspired a keen interest in math. Also he was able to see that mathematics goes well beyond the "not so interesting" lessons that were taught in his grade 1 class then. He is now in grade 4, has a lot more experience with math and still refers to this book for entertainment and learning.

Nice

I love this book. I got it as a present for someone, and I'm almost tempted to keep it for myself. It's got loads of 'Alice in Wonderland' type puzzles in it, seen through the eyes of a cat.

A delight!

A good book.