“My Hundred Friends” Campaign Update #2: Reading the Book with Children

This is a joint blog post by Kara Shane Colley, the author of My Hundred Friends that is soon to be published at Natural Math, and Dr. Maria Droujkova, the founder of Natural Math. We’ll be posting periodic updates about the book on the blog.

I like how it’s funny and learnful.
Elizabeth, 4th grade reader

Maria: In My Hundred Friends by Kara Shane Colley, the math of factors and multiples is friendship. It’s a cozy little world, inviting readers to play and explore. From April 27 to June 27, head to My Hundred Friends crowdfunding campaign to preorder hardcover copies for your family or group, reserve your complimentary PDF, and support mathematical storytelling!

Kara: While editing the book, I spent several afternoons reading early drafts of My Hundred Friends with a Montessori class of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. The teacher gave me a corner of the room and set me up with pairs of students.

I greeted the children and explained, “I’m writing a book and I’d like your feedback on it. I’d like you to read it and tell me what you like, what you don’t like, what’s confusing. I’ve illustrated the book so far, but I am not going to be the actual illustrator.” I handed them my sketchbook, and they turned to page 1.

In the first few pages, the children noticed right away how excited the numbers are to see themselves in the other numbers. On page 4 in the bottom right corner was 4’s prime factorization, 2 ✕ 2, with Two exclaiming, “Look! It’s me and me again.” On page 8 in the bottom right corner was 8’s prime factorization, 2 ✕ 2 ✕ 2, with Two doing excited cartwheels and exclaiming, “Wow, it’s me! And me! And me!”

Quoting Two’s line, Beck, a 4th grade reader, said, “‘It’s me!’ I’ve never seen a book like that.”

The numbers being numbers have inherent, repetitive structure just bursting to come out. The children turned the page from page 8 to page 9. In the bottom right corner, they saw 9’s prime factorization, 3 ✕ 3. The children chuckled to themselves when they saw Three exclaim, “Look! It’s me and me again.”

And it wasn’t very long before the children reached page 16, where they saw 16’s prime factorization, 2 ✕ 2 ✕ 2 ✕ 2. They smiled and laughed again. Helen, a 6th grade reader, told me, “I like 2. He’s always there!” Theo, another 6th grade reader, remarked, “I like the patterns in the book. I feel rewarded.”

Maria: Humans are social creatures, and big areas of our brains are devoted to people and relationships. Our imaginations spark playful bonds with characters and toys. What if we could use all that social reasoning to boost our mathematical power? Yet merely adding a face and limbs to a number won’t give it enough life for a good story or game. My favorite authors create their number-characters and storylines with deep care for each number’s mathematical behavior. In beloved books like The Cat in Numberland and shows like Numberblocks, numbers are persons, and everyday adventures spring from their mathematical personalities.

Kara: The children also liked the connections to daily life. When they reached page 13 with its connections to bagels, 4th grade readers Beck and Elizabeth became animated, telling me that the bagel should be “tastier-looking” and that I should “toast it and color it.” Based on this feedback, the bagel did become tastier as I made edits to the book. (I can’t wait to see illustrator Coley Nielsen’s bagel! Yum!)

The children interacted with the drawings in ways that I didn’t expect, reaching out to grab the bagel or tracing the path of a jumping number-character. They touched the pages, brushing their hands over the number-characters, almost like they were petting them. Theo said, “Your drawings are so cute, so sweet!”

Maria: Why do we care so deeply about children touching their mathematics? Because that physical play develops excellent habits of mind. Children learn to order numbers in space to hunt for complex patterns. They use visual structures like graphs and tables to solve problems, or read data from clever diagrams such as factor trees in My Hundred Friends. Our society is full of complex number patterns and data. Early, happy familiarity with organizing numbers in space helps every child.

Kara: I usually spent about 15 minutes with one pair of children, and then the next pair of children came to my corner. Many pairs just read the book straight through, starting at page 1 and going forward. One pair of children, Theo and Pascale, reached page 24 and noticed that the number-character Twenty-Four had one strip of brown at the bottom. Pascale, a 4th grade reader, asked, “What’s brown?” She paused and then wondered, “ Is it 12?” as they flipped back to page 12. Pascale guessed, “6?” as they flipped back to page 6. “No, it’s 3!” she exclaimed as they landed on page 3.

They were on to something! They had picked up some sort of pattern with the colors. From that point forward, Theo and Pascale started reading with an eye towards what was going on with the colors. I didn’t explain the role of colors in the book; they were having fun trying to figure it out. I held myself back, asking a few open-ended questions, like “What do you notice?” or “What do you see?” 

This was such an exciting moment for me. I had created a world where kids were exploring and asking themselves math questions. They were playing with the number-characters, playing with math. At the end of our session together, Elizabeth remarked, “I like how it’s funny and learnful.” That felt like high praise! 

If you have a child, a classroom, or a fondness for cozy math, I invite you to come explore My Hundred Friends. What number connections might your child make? How might your student pretend-play with their favorite number-characters?