Less Than Zero

Title: Less Than Zero
Author: Stuart J. Murphy
Illustrator: Frank Remkiewicz
Publisher and date of Publication: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003
Genre: Picture Book, Concept Book
Age Range: 2nd-3rd grade
Summary:
This picture book is about a little peguin named Perry. Perry wants an ice scooter and it costs 9 clams but Perry doesn't have any.
Through the book, Perry does odd jobs to get clams but also gets pressured into spending his clams. Through his journey Perry helps readers to understand negative numbers buy spending more clams than he has. In the end Perry gets enough clams to buy the ice scooter he wanted.

Response:
I think that this book is wonderful for young children struggling with adding and subtracting when you are left with negative numbers. Perry uses a graph in the story to show visually how many clams he has. The graph helps children who needs to see things visually to understand what a negative
number is. The illustrations in the book were made with bold colors that I loved and I know children would love as well. At one part in the story Perry uses his clams to buy a fishy float, which is like buying ice cream off the ice cream truck. I loved seeing the visual of
what a fishy float was. This book could also help children who don't understand how to make a line graph. When I was in school, I understood negative numbers pretty well but a lot of children can't understand that there can be numbers below zero. The illustrations in the book are so bright and lively. It feels as if you are there, on the ice, with the little peguin. Children would love this story with the illustrations, and learn at the same time.

Teaching Ideas:
This book would be so good for second or third graders that are introduced to negative numbers. The story could help them understand by having a story to associate it with. I would read this story maybe even before introducing negative numbers during story time and have a children take turns listening to the story and drawing a line on the line graph from what I read in the story, like Perry did.