On Beyond a Million: An Amazing Math Journey

On Beyond a Million is fantastic. I shared it with my third grade class as part of a lesson about big numbers (and a pre-pre-introduction to the basis of scientific notation, although I didn't take it that far with the kids). The book calls counting by powers of ten "power counting" and that was quite adequate for 9 year olds! The book is well written, full of fun illustrations, and presents the concept of big numbers and "power counting" in a way that third graders found highly engaging. I have to admit, however, the book also enabled me a greater understanding of what really big numbers are all about... and there's not a google of anything, by the way :) On Beyond a Million also includes a number of interesting # facts (e.g. how much rain forest is destroyed every minute, number of mosquitoes a little brown bat eats, and how many hairs on a square inch of a human head) that get bigger as larger powers of ten are introduced page by page. After reading this book to/with the class I showed them Ray and Charles Eames' "Powers of Ten." The book gave meaning to large numbers and what adding a power of ten does and was a perfect intro for the film. I've also taught 5th and 6th grade and am confident the book would interest just about any audience. I loved it!

My son loves numbers and frequently asks questions about large numbers "What is bigger than googol?" I wasn't sure if he would be able to follow everything but he really enjoyed the writing style of the book which was very story-like. He understood it and really enjoyed some of things he learned (like, there is no such number as a zillion).Great for G/T youngsters who can read and like math and great for kids of all ages!

My students really enjoyed this book. I read it to 4th grade

My students and I read this book during our powers of 10 unit and they loved it!

This is a good book for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. The illustrations help keep the children's attention. It would definitely be good for an inclusion class.

Great book to use to teach place value.

This book does a great job of explaining exponents in a fun way. As long as they understand the concepts of place value & multiplication, they can understand exponents. It is a fun read, even if they aren't quite ready for exponents yet. It is just plain fun to hear some of the unusual names for really big numbers. Sometimes it is a little hard to decide which part to read next, since there are short extra facts on every page & the story is all broken up into speech bubbles. I would have found this book helpful in middle school to understand exponents, but my child understood them before our curriculum expected her to understand multiplication! (Granted, our family DOES love to talk about math, so we were already ahead of the curriculum. This was just one of the books we got out of the library to read for fun & get familiar with math terms. You should have seen the excitement when it was opened for Christmas!)

On Beyond a Million is my sons favorite math storybook. Since reading this book, I hear them using the words google and googleplex in conversations with each other. They are young (ages 5 and 7), so I don't think they understood all of it, but my seven year old figured out exponents from the book, and now he can do exponents on his own. It introduced more advanced math concepts in a fun way.

I'm usually keen on number books for kids and have many but found this one fairly boring. Didn't like how it tried to explain bigger numbers - explanations were not simple enough to convey meaning easily.

Bien recibido. Es un libro estupendo para trabajar con cifras grandes, narrado en forma de historia con divertidos y sencillos problemas que ayuda a pensar y entender.

My son loves this book. It's fascinating !