Tiny Treasury

Math Curse

By Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

Did you ever wake up to one of those days where everything is a problem? You have 10 things to do, but only 30 minutes until your bus leaves. Is there enough time? You have 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants. Can you make 1 good outfit? Then you start to wonder: Why does everything have to be such a problem? Why do 2 apples always have to be added to 5 oranges? Why do 4 kids always have to divide 12 marbles? Why can’t you just keep 10 cookies without someone taking 3 away? Why? Because you’re the victim of a Math Curse. That’s why.

A girl finds herself trapped in a math curse when her teacher, Mrs. Fibonacci, tells the class they can think of almost anything as a math problem. Soon she sees math everywhere.

I loved arithmetic but word problems drove me crazy. If I wanted to know how long it takes a train to go from one place to another, I’d get a train schedule. Scieszka, a former math teacher, takes numerical enigmas and creates a mind-boggling, hysterically funny book. There is some legitimate math within the nonsense, but most of it is just plain fun.

Assignment: What is the significance of Mrs. Fibonacci’s name?

Science Verse

By Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

Have you ever stopped to smell the roses?

Have you ever paused to listen to the poetry of science in everything?

Here’s the story of one kid who did.

TOO BAD FOR HIM.

It turned everything into science poetry.

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, The Science Verse curse will drive you nuts too.

Mrs. Fibonacci laid a Math Curse; now Mr. Newton says, ” . . . if you listen closely enough, you can hear the poetry of science in everything.”

What if a boring lesson about the food chain becomes a sing-aloud celebration about predators and prey? A twinkle-twinkle little star transforms into a twinkle-less, sunshine-eating-and rhyming Black Hole? What if amoebas, combustion, metamorphosis, viruses, the creation of the universe are all irresistible, laugh-out-loud poetry? Well, you’re thinking in science verse, that’s what. And if you can’t stop the rhymes . . . the atomic joke is on you.

What follows is a series of poems that parody the styles of Joyce Kilmer, Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, Robert Frost, and many others, as well as familiar songs and nursery rhymes. “Once in first grade I was napping/When I heard a scary yapping” begins a lament about studying dinosaurs year after year. In “Astronaut Stopping by a Planet on a Snowy Evening,” the narrator bemoans the fact that he can’t figure out what planet he’s on because “In science class I was asleep-.”

Only the creators of Math Curse could make science and poetry so much fun.