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Review - Murderous Maths - Kjartan Poskitt

After an introductory story, Kjartan Poskitt starts, very reasonably with the basics of maths - adding, subtracting and all that. This is essential, but it's possible slightly older readers will be put off by such basic stuff. They shouldn't be - he's soon off onto the next level up, but there is a need to force yourself past those very basic bits.

There's some nice stuff about early number systems - how hard it would be to do maths with Roman numerals, and even a spot on Archimedes novel system devised to make it possible to calculate the number of grains of sand that would fill the universe. It's then explained why our number system, and the good old zero, makes things a lot easier. We meet powers, geometry, algebra and more - but in the usual, painless and indeed fun fashion of Poskitt's friendly maths books, ably helped by Trevor Dunton's illustrations.

To keep us amused there are deviations into magic squares, prime numbers, time (sorry, time? That's part of maths because? Oh well...) and more. It's maths, Jim, but thankfully not as we know it. The only real moan was the occasional use of the Scholastic series' favourite irritating feature - questions with upside-down answers - but Poskitt doesn't make any where near as much use of them as Nick Arnold does in the Horrible Science books. Oh, and there's a rather painful bit where he slags off calculators, which has a good message, but comes across rather like boring old person moaning about the way everyone uses mobile phones these days, where in his day they would send a letter. Or a pigeon. Or something.

Rating this one was quite difficult. It does the job very well - and in that respect deserves four stars. It probably is the best book we've seen on the basics of maths. But the fact is, in maths as in most other things, the basics aren't the most interesting bits, and the three stars reflects the reality that, ably though Poskitt does his job, it's not the most inspiring topic.

Only in paperback (US version is hardback and may be out of print)

Reviewed by Peter Spitz

Kid's review to follow...

* Our age range recommendation is an estimated guide, but individual readers outside the range could still enjoy the book!

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