The Wing Wing Brothers Geometry Palooza! - Hardcover

K-Gr 2—The wacky, wide-eyed Wing Wing brothers impart a few geometry terms through their silly antics. Through panels illustrated in Prismacolor pencil and digital coloring, these goofy-looking birds describe various mathematical concepts. In the first story, readers learn about relative position, as each brother tries to aim for a ring of fire after being blasted out of a cannon. One lands in front of the ring, another behind, and so on until Walter is finally able to go through it. In the second story, the brothers start with triangles and squares to create rectangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms. The third story shows Walter lying in a rectangular box, which Wendell saws into half, then fourths. Unlike the magic trick seen often see on stage, Walter does indeed come away in four pieces, but it's nothing a bottle of glue can't fix. Though the back of the book states that it contains "an entertaining lesson for readers about basic geometric shapes and vocabulary" and "meets the Common Core State Standards for kindergarten mathematics in Geometry," it would take much more than this title to instill an understanding of the concepts. This work is much more a humorous review of facts readers already know than a lesson for those unfamiliar with the topic. If you have students who already appreciate the Wing Wing Brothers' goofy approach to mathematical concepts, this one won't disappoint; just don't expect it to take the place of thoughtful instruction.—Maggie Chase, Boise State University, ID