Why Must Read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi?

Having prepared myself for rejection, ready for rebuke for shoving math down her throat, I was rather amazed how my almost 8-year old granddaughter took to these books. Illustrations are nothing special, but effective. The child loves the punny names of all the characters. I now think she'll understand the concepts radius, diameter, circumference, pi, for the rest of her life. The child is only just beginning to learn her 2x, 3x multiplication tables, but she became so good after reading this book at thinking of circles in terms of Pi = Circumference divided by Diameter, I somewhat regretted that Knights of Angleland used angle measurements in degrees instead of radians. A missed opportunity. Because of this book, perhaps the first mathematical formula she truly understands is Circumference (read: Sir Cumference) = 2(Pi)(Radius) or (Pi)(Diameter). Using radians (Radius is Sir Cumference's son) as the angle measurement would both prepare kids for basic trig and allow for endless punning opportunities. Oh well ... maybe later in the series after old Sir Degrees passes away ... Even so, she liked it a lot more than I expected and it taught the material well. Hit right in her wheelhouse for reading level and just a hair ahead of her in math, though it's given her an incentive (among several) to learn her multiplication tables, which have been met with less resistance than one might suspect. She's voraciously read Dragons of Pi, Knights of Angleland, and the First Roundtable, all at least twice, this one four times, at least, so we're going to try a couple more. For me as an adult, I almost went with four stars because the illustrations aren't particularly inspiring. But based on how elegantly it treats the subject matter and the impressive reaction from my focus group of one, on her behalf I'll go with five. I wasn't expecting Sir Cumference to become a house favorite, but lately there always seems to be a copy near the top of the stack.