What’s The Eight-Year-Old reading this week?
Our semi-weekly survey of the tidbits that cross The Eight-Year-Old’s desk.
A sampling of this week’s books:
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland — A Math Adventure by Cindy Neuschwander (Illustrated by Wayne Geehan)
From the description on Amazon: “Radius is on a quest to earn his knighthood! With only a circular medallion, a mysterious poem, and his own wits to guide him, he must find and rescue a missing king.” This book is one of a collection of math-based picture books that the Eight-Year-Old rereads every once in a while.
The Borrowers by Mary Norton (Illustrated by Joe and Beth Krush)
I read this to The Eight-Year-Old years ago, but of course she doesn’t remember any of it. The book tells the story of the Clock family, wee folk who live under the kitchen of an old English manor. A sweet story that stands up well to rereading.
The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton W. Burgess (Illustrated by Harrison Cady)
In this adorable collection of animal stories, Prickly Porky makes a friend, Granny Fox loses her dignity, and Old Man Coyote loses his appetite.
In the news:
Ten stunning images show the beauty hidden in pi (Washington Post)
What? You thought we could only talk about math on pi day (March 14)?
Incorrigible data tinkerer Martin Krzywinski has joined forces with artist Cristian Vasile to create a series of images depicting pi (you know, that infinitely long number that starts 3.14159265358979323846264…).
To create the above image, Krzywinski and Vasile assigned a color and an arc (a section of the circumference of a circle) to each digit 0-9. They then connected the numerical arcs with chords in the order in which the digits occurred in the number pi.
Each chord was assigned a color based on the digit where it originated. Krzywinski and Vasile started by drawing a pink chord connecting 3 to 1, then a tan chord connecting 1 to 4, then a teal chord connecting 4 back to 1, and then another tan chord connecting 1 to 5, and so on for some giant number of digits in pi.
The result is something I want to have printed onto canvas and posted on my office wall. (Birthday present alert!)
Related Links:
- What’s The Seven-Year-Old reading this week? (Caterpickles)
CATERPICKLES 
What are you thinking?