Sir Cumference and his wife, Lady Di, are back in another math adventure. As the hosts of a surprise birthday party for King Arthur, the couple needs to organize a growing number of guests for events to run smoothly. After several fumbling attempts to count the crowd, Sir Cumference realizes that the simplest way to figure out the total is to group the guests into tens, hundreds, and ultimately thousands. This system allows the royal celebration to take place without a hitch, resulting in a happy ending for all. Children will enjoy the lesson built into this tale and identify with the birthday-party theme. While the story can be enjoyed independently, most youngsters would benefit from sharing the book with an adult to fully understand the place value system. The math concept is explained in more detail in an author’s note. The painterly acrylic illustrations convey the action with humorous exaggeration and amusing details (the depiction of a farmer and his wife is reminiscent of Grand Wood’s American Gothic). Libraries in which this series is popular will want to consider purchasing this title.

Have you met Sir Cumference? He’s such a wonderful person, along with his wife, Lady Di, and son, Radius. His friends can’t be beat either - King Arthur, Geo of Metry, Sym, Sir D’Grees, King Lell, Per, Countess Areana, Vertex, Sir Tangent, Sir Lionel Segment and others.

Living in Camelot under King Arthur, Sir Cumference and his buddies must work through many complications that require mathematical and logical thinking. During visits to such places as the Mountains of Obtuse, Angleland and the Isle of Immeter, people must be rescued, clues must be found and problems must be solved!

The stories are full of action and suspense that have kept my children enthralled time and time again. The author, Cindy Neuschwander, is an absolute genius in the creativity of these books! It’s beyond me how the books not only have a great plot, but teach math concepts within the storyline – and don’t lose any qualities of living literature in the process!

Depending on the book(s) you read, the following concepts are covered:

* Circumference
* Diameter
* Radius
* Pi
* Angles
* Lines
* Measurement
* Perimeter
* Area
* 3-D shapes
* Counting by 10’s, 100’s, 1,000’s

Any child 1st grade and above will enjoy listening to the stories, but older children (4th grade and higher) will most likely grasp the math concepts best. I used to check the books out from the library until I almost wore my card out rechecking them! Now, I’m the proud owner of each and every one. (A CM homeschool can never have enough living literature on the bookshelves, can it?)

Sir Cumference and All the King's Tens is a Math Adventure book for elementary age children that uses the king's surprise birthday celebration for a chance to learn to count by tens. Surprise party guest attendance must be counted quickly because Lady Di and Sir Cumference, the host and hostess for the birthday party, need to know how many guests to feed for lunch and dinner. In a comical series of preparation adventures, Sir Cumference and Lady Di count guests by tens, hundreds, and even thousands, using a system known as "place value" for their numbers. How many guests attend in total, and does the gloomy king finally smile and enjoy his birthday party? Inquisitive budding math minds will want to know, so pages will painlessly turn and numbers will effortlessly be learned in Sir Cumference and All the King's Men, a math masterpiece!