Number Stories: Learning Arithmetic Through the Adventures of Ralph and His Schoolmates

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Alhambra G. Deming’s entertaining stories fuse fiction with figures, teaching young readers arithmetic while entertaining them with the adventures of Ralph, an entrepreneurial boy who undertakes odd jobs to support his family.

Number Stories was conceived by Deming as a novel way of engaging children with numeracy and basic mathematics. Through the narrative stories in this book, we learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, while concepts such as percentages and fractions are also explained. Techniques of mental arithmetic are also explained, with equations demonstrated in clear and understandable ways.

The narration focuses first on Ralph, a boy whose father is injured at work. Lacking a source of income to cover his Dad’s health expenses, Ralph sells newspapers and groceries, makes lemonade, and hands in old clothes as a means of generating money. Later he journeys with his uncle to the family farm, where he learns how the farm business is a matter of calculating the size of fields and harvests. All of these adventures are accompanied by sums.

The later portion of Number Stories takes place in Ralph’s school, wherein his classmates are asked to raise money as part of a school project. As with the earlier chapters, the various ideas and novelties of the schoolchildren lead to their learning plenty of arithmetic.