AL, Logical

AL, Logical! is full color, 72 page graphic novel about a problem solving young woman named Al. She finds a mysterious house that challenges her and one of the house's residents, a mathematician who may be a ghost. Coming soon to Natural Math and Kickstarter. Sign up for notifications from Natural Math here.

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 young mathematician doing mathematics. The math content tended to be pretty directly school mathematics or high level math from history. Xavier had an opportunity to do a senior college project, 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. Natural Math publishes under creative commons, so anyone who wants access to the book will be able to get it. Xavier is redoing inks. letters and colors for this fresh iteration, plus some changes from our rereading and feedback from some test readers. 

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...

But there's more going on in this house than they could ever guess!

There are some scenes in Al's math classroom as well, where her teacher is also learning to try some new things.

If mathy comic books seem like something in which you might be interested, here are some we knew and some we found as we investigated.

• 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.
• Math Alchemy, the great traveling math art exhibit, has a companion comic.
• Xavier and John's first math comic (when X=12) - Mr Slope Guy!