Author: Frank Murphy (no website found)
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Rating: WARTY!
Illustrated by Richard Walz (no website found)
I picked this up because it was described as a "math reader" for grades 2 to 3 (~six-year-olds for non US residents), and the reason I am rating this negatively is tri-fold: one that I don't see what it has to do with teaching math, the second that it's really a hero-worship book about Ben Franklin more than it is anything else, and finally that it contains outright lies. I honestly don't get the OCD in the US to label everyone a hero. When everyone is a hero, then the appellation loses all currency and becomes meaningless. In fact, it becomes an insult to real heroes. Yes, Ben Franklin was a remarkable person, but no, he wasn't a super hero, and no, he wasn't noted for his outstanding contributions to math.Contrary to the impression given here, he did not invent magic squares, which have been around for a least two and a half millennia. He did not start the first ever fire department - the first in Pennsylvania maybe, but not the first ever in the US, which preceded him by a century or so. The city of Boston, Massachusetts, established America's first publicly funded paid fire department in 1679. He didn't have "a pet squirrel called Skugg" - squirrels were simply known as "skuggs" in his day. He did not invent flippers - such as swimmers wear on their feet today - he merely used paddles which he wore on his hands. Franklin himself reported all of these things - which doesn't mean he necessarily invented them. We don't know where he got the ideas, because he never said. The "kite surfing" he did was across a pond, not "for a mile down a river" as is indicated here. Franklin wrote to someone that he was "happy in the invention of double spectacles" which to me doesn't tell me that he invented them, merely that he was thrilled that someone had.
To its credit, this book doesn't try to promulgate the lies that credit Franklin with inventing air conditioning, bulkheads, and daylight savings time, but it was more of a surprise that it didn't than credit-worthy. In short, this book tells too many lies, offers no a whit of math education as such, instead touting gimmicks as math, and I flatly refuse to recommend a children's book like this.
