I am an unabashed fan of math and comic books. My son Xavier grew up to be an art teacher and cartoonist. So maybe it was fate that we would collaborate to make a mathy graphic novel.
There are several delightful entries in the intersection of math and comics, but we couldn't find anything that had the protagonist being a mathematician doing mathematics. The math content tended to be pretty directly school mathematics. Xavier had an opportunity to do a senior project and wanted to do an original graphic novel and this book was born. We wrote, Xavier illustrated, and we printed up a few copies, just planning on distributing the pdfs to anyone interested. But then we got connected to Maria Drujkova and Natural Math. I love their books, and have most of them on my shelves. The activities always work, they are fun and creative. Maria thought AL, Logical might be a worthy entry to the Natural Math family. Xavier is redoing inks. letters and colors for this fresh iteration. Coming soon to Kickstarter!
We brainstormed as a family, and came up with the idea of a young woman, Al, and a house that wasn't always there. She finally has an excuse to go in, and the adventure starts. Along the way she meets a mathematician who is not such a help, being stuck personally and maybe literally.The math is all activities I've tried with learners, K-16 and beyond. More importantly, to us, we get to see Al doing math. I love Tracy Zager's book, Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had. Her framework is about what mathematicians do. Mathematicians take risks, make mistakes, are precise, rise to a challenge, ask questions, connect ideas, reason, prove, work together and alone. Al does all those things in these pages.
There are several fun explorations...
- Using Graphic Novels in the STEM Classroom a book for teachers looking to use such things.
- Logicomix, biography of Bertrand Russell.
- Alan Turing Decoded, also a bio.
- Solution Squad, the original math powered superheroes
- The Solvers, a series featuring crime solving teens with math powers.
- Escape from Hotel Infinity
- Who Killed Professor X? a mystery where you solve problems to get clues.
- Prime Baby by Gene Luen Yang, who is a real deal in the comic book industry.
- Babymouse: Dragonslayer a math episode in the long running series.
- Beast Academy is a full math curriculum in comic book form.
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