“AL, Logical” campaign update #5

This is a joint blog post by Xavi Golden and Dr. John Golden, the authors of AL, Logical that is soon to be published by Natural Math, and Dr. Maria Droujkova, the founder of Natural Math. We’ll be posting periodic updates about the book on the blog.

Hey, everyone!

It’s been a minute since we’ve given you all an update; so, let’s remedy that.

After a busy summer of traveling, math conferences, and teaching classes, we’re knuckling down on layout, cover design, and the book’s supplemental materials. All that being said, the new estimated delivery date is September 2026. As we’re sure you’re aware, this is later than we originally planned, but we appreciate your understanding and support. If you are planning on teaching out of the book in August or September, please contact us for the current draft.

While we work on getting the book ready for printing, make sure you’ve completed the backer survey so we know where to ship your copy (or copies)!

Meanwhile, here’s a glimpse at our work on the cover. This is one of the first back-and-front cover drafts from a couple of years ago, which we call “the superhero ensemble,” and the front cover you saw during crowdfunding this spring:

That’s good, but AL is an action hero in the book, so we wanted her doing things on the cover. Math things. Maybe:

Great, mission accomplished! But now we are missing those “ready for anything” vibes from the first covers and the extradimensional robodog. Also, the ghost-mathematician was pretty special. Could we have it all? But how? Here’s the most recent cover sketch (back and front). What do you think?

In case your students want to draw their own versions of the Mathematician’s haunted house just like the book team did, John made a GeoGebra prototype (isometric) where you can turn the individual slabs around: https://www.geogebra.org/m/su6cuxzq

Author events

Grand Valley State University interviewed the authors for their alumni newsletter. Check it out!

If you’d like a live event with the authors for your class, math circle, or other community, contact us.