My Hundred Friends
My Hundred Friends is an illustrated hardcover book for children ages 7-11 or for anyone learning about factors, multiples, and primes. The story makes lighthearted connections to family, sports, history, and science. Readers meet jellybean-shaped number-characters in their cozy world where math patterns, sequences, and combinations form friendships.
CROWDFUND the book by June 27th!
TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS $1,431.00 OF $8000 GOAL
BACKERS: 19
Choose rewards listed below, add them to your card, and check out. Shipping will be added at checkout. We ship books worldwide. This will be the 14th book project crowdfunded and published by Natural Math.
Early Supporter Bonus
Everyone who contributes during the first week of the campaign will receive a bonus mini-version poster with all the adorable 100 friends from the book in their factorization diagram form. Support joyful math and brighten your home or classroom!
Boost and Encourage
Every math friend is welcome. Send the author an encouraging note, tell parents and teachers about this new book, and get the PDF of My Hundred Friends to delight your children or students. Your name or pseudonym will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign. Free access and mutual support help us run a sustainable company. Big thanks to each of you for making a good world possible with better mathematics!
If you also want to contribute money, type the amount into the slot above. Big thanks to every backer who makes this book possible!
eBook – $8
You will receive the Kindle, iOS, and PDF My Hundred Friends eBooks. Your name or pseudonym will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign. Click to support at this level.
Hardcover – $25
You will receive one hardcover My Hundred Friends book and eBooks. Your name, pseudonym, organization, team, or project will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign. Click to support at this level.
Friends Bundle – 2-4 copies
Increase the number of books in your cart to 2-4 and share math joy with friends and family. Each copy is $22. You will receive blank gift cards with adorable number friend art, hardcover My Hundred Friends books, and eBooks. Your name, pseudonym, organization, team, or project will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign.
Large Group Bundle – 5+ copies
Increase the number of books in your cart to 5+ and share math joy with your math circle or class. Each copy is $19. You will receive a poster with all 100 number friends in their factorization diagram form, hardcover My Hundred Friends books, and eBooks. Your name, pseudonym, organization, team, or project will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign.
Poster – $25
You will receive a 12-by-18-inch glossy wall poster with all 100 number friends in their factorization diagram form and eBooks of My Hundred Friends. Your name or pseudonym will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign. Click to support at this level.
Book + poster bundle mix and match
Mix and match any number of posters and books in your shopping cart to make your own bundles of 2-4 items ($22 each) or 5+ items ($19 each).
Donors Choose – $250
Have a bundle of ten books donated in your name to a math circle, school library, community center, math festival, or another organization or event that can use some support from math friends. Choose recipients or contribute to the Natural Math Alliance nonprofit outreach. We will put your dedication and logo in the book, display them during the events, and send photos showing your gift in place and in action. Your name, pseudonym, organization, team, or project will be credited in the book, and you will receive updates on the campaign. You will also receive one hardcover My Hundred Friends book and eBooks, one factorization poster, and gift cards with adorable number friend art. Click to support at this level.
You will receive your book when it comes out. Estimated time is November 2026. We’ll send periodic email updates as we are making the book.
Author’s Note
The origin of this story came to me about a week before my 48th birthday. As my birthday approached, I thought about my upcoming new age: “48… 48… That’s 16 times 3. Oh, that’s cool; I’ve lived through three 16-year-long eras.” I do this every year on my birthday. I wonder, “Is my age a prime number? Is my age a perfect square? How does my age factor?” And so on. As I thought about this, I realized that I have a genuine relationship with these numbers. And I wondered if I could share my relationship with numbers with others by writing this story.
I relate to numbers in symbolic and personal ways. This is an example of a symbolic relationship: 7 days is one week. This is an example of a personal relationship: Growing up, there were 3 kids in my family, so 3 is Kyle, Kevin, and Kara, my two brothers and me. These connections invite the reader to think about their own relationships to the numbers 1 to 100.
Author’s sketch of page 3
The story is bursting with adorable number-characters. They romp around, visiting one another’s pages and adding a lighthearted tone to the story. A 6th-grade reader said, “The drawings are so cute, so sweet!” Meanwhile, a mathematician will recognize friendly pathways into sequences and series, combinatorics, and number theory.
My Hundred Friends has a repetitiveness and rhythm that readers find satisfying. There are many patterns in the book, patterns like “Look! It’s me and me again!” As the patterns occur again and again, readers start to anticipate them, making predictions and feeling contentment when the patterns play out as predicted. A student reader said, “I like the patterns in the book. I feel rewarded.”
Illustrated page 9
All good relationships grow over time. My Hundred Friends offers an exploration of factors and primes so active and tactile that you can almost dive into the play. While the colors in the story form a mathematical structure, the number-characters’ visits to one another also form a web of social connections. With bright, vivid colors and joyful playdates, the number-characters help readers see and feel what it means to factor a number into its prime factorization.
Readers develop number sense by spending time with and rollicking along with the number-characters. The book shows how any number can make friends with any other number, whatever their colors or stripes. Readers: What number connections and number patterns might you make? How might you pretend-play with your favorite number-characters?
Kara’s sketchbook
I’m good friends with the numbers 1 to 100. My sincere hope is that readers will develop more friendly connections with the number-characters and, by extension, with the numbers themselves. The book is a kind, welcoming math gathering: I invite you to come, hang out, and meet a few new friends.
Number Relationships? Why?
By exploring the numbers through relationships to things in our lives, we show children that they can make their own personal connections to numbers. By exploring the numbers as playful, quirky number-characters, we hope readers develop friendly connections with the number-characters and then, with the numbers. By exploring the number-characters’ relationships to one another, we show that multiplication creates a web of relationships.
Illustrated page 12
Just like the characters in our favorite stories, when we care about a character, we connect and build a relationship with them. We believe that math and relationships are complementary tools for building human understanding and connecting essential ideas. We believe that every child has number relationships to explore.
Meet the Author
Kara Shane Colley is a math educator. She has taught middle school, high school, and community college math in the Marshall Islands, upstate New York, England, and Oregon. Kara has led math circles and math teacher circles. Currently, she works as a math curriculum writer.
Reading is a huge part of her life. Kara loves to read novels, newspapers (the kind printed on actual paper and delivered to your doorstep), and Supreme Court decisions. She is an advocate for public spaces, especially for city parks and public libraries. She is also a figure skater, an open water swimmer, a wilderness backpacker, a shape note singer, and a fiddle player. Kara lives in Portland, Oregon, with her sweetie, Sky, and her two kids. This is her first book.
Meet the Illustrator
Coley Nielsen is a children’s book illustrator living in Portland, Oregon. She works in traditional and digital media, always seeking a warm, textural, hand-done quality in her art. She finds joy in creating silly, memorable characters and cozy, colorful worlds.
Meet the Publisher
At the Natural Math Alliance, we believe that a good world is possible with better mathematics. Together with children, parents, teachers, and organizers, we help everyone grow a happy familiarity with all sixty-plus mathematics subjects as math makers. To match these goals, we developed a unique publishing process, giving authors, artists, and even readers a lot of creative control.
A book starts with amazing authors who deeply care about mathematics and learning. Each author spends many hours improving every aspect of the manuscript by testing the book with children, families, and classes.
Next comes our Future Book Club: the brave volunteers who field-test the draft in their own families, classes, math circles, book clubs, museum groups, and other programs. They come from all learning backgrounds and all continents (except Antarctica, so far), making Natural Math books more community-responsive and real.
Crowdfunding comes next. Thank you!
Our crew of professional editors, proofreaders, and designers are paid with the crowdfunding money. They make the book a joy to hold, each page or eBook screen a smooth reading experience. Natural Math books are distributed by the American Mathematical Society and have been featured by The Atlantic, The NY Times, and many lovely press and online places dedicated to learning, parenting, and mathematics.
As with all our previous books, My Hundred Friends will be published under a Creative Commons license. That means that people all over the world will be able to access its content, translate it into different languages—and share their ideas based on the book. The Creative Commons site features an interview with the Natural Math founder in its celebration of innovative projects in education.
If you are a part of the Natural Math community, thank you for your continuing support. If you are new to Natural Math, welcome to the adventure!
