Children's books and activities

Math and Measuring

Do you know any kids who are fascinated by numbers and love to count, puzzle out fractions, and measure stuff? We've gathered up a great collection of books, activities, apps, and websites for learning all about math and measuring.

Try pairing fiction with nonfiction books and exploring different genres (like poetry and biographies) and formats (like graphic novels and audio books). You'll be creating your own "text sets" — collections of texts focused on a specific topic, such as math and measuring. Reading widely in this way helps children build background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Math and Measuring

Great Fiction & Nonfiction Books

Age Level: 3-6 years old

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Absolutely One Thing: Featuring Charlie and Lola

By: Lauren Child

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Sometimes, as a treat, Mom takes Charlie and Lola to the store and says they may choose one...

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Bedtime Math

By: Laura Overdeck

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Math is not only all around but everyday goings-on make thinking mathematically fun. Activities of...

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Cook-A-Doodle-Do!

By: Janet Stevens

Age Level: 3-6 years old

A charming picture book about a hen who decides to make a strawberry shortcake with her friends......

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Counting on Community

By: Innosanto Nagara

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Concept Book

Counting up from one stuffed piñata to ten hefty hens — and always counting on each other —...

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How Big Were the Dinosaurs?

By: Bernard Most

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Dinosaurs are endlessly fascinating. Perhaps because it is hard to imagine giant lizards roaming...

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Inch by Inch

By: Leo Lionni

Age Level: 3-6 years old

A small inch worm "green as an emerald" avoids being eating by a hungry robin using his wit — and...

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Cover of Josefina showing young Mexican woman holding many clay figures.

Josefina

By: Jeanette Winter

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Concept Book

Count along in English and Spanish with a Mexican folk artist as she sculpts her world from clay...

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Millions, Billions and Trillions: Understanding Big Numbers

By: David Adler

Age Level: 3-6 years old

A billion is a big number, bigger than a million. "It's written like this: 1,000,000,000 — one...

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Musk Ox Counts

By: Erin Cabatingan

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Concept Book

Zebra wants to create a traditional counting book but his buddy, Musk Ox, is not cooperating at all...

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One Fox: A Counting Book Thriller

By: Kate Read

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Concept Book

One hungry fox with two sly eyes is on the prowl…three plump hens had better watch out! Rich and...

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One Gorilla: A Counting Book

By: Anthony Browne

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Whether or not the primates introduced from 1 to 10 are familiar, readers are sure to appreciate...

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Perimeter, Area and Volume: A Monster Book of Dimensions

By: David Adler

Age Level: 3-6 years old

A group of movie-making monsters introduce the concepts needed to make a 3-dimensional film: width...

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Sheep Won't Sleep: Counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s

By: Judy Cox

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Clarissa is flabbergasted. Ten of the sheep she was counting while trying to doze off have...

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Teddy Bear Patterns

By: Barbara McGrath

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Colorful toy teddy bears appear on open pages with an engaging, rhyming narrative. Children will be...

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Age Level: 6-9 years old

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7 Ate 9

By: Tara Lazar

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Private I tries to assuage 6 who just knows that 7 is coming to get him! Why? Because 7 8 9, of...

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7 X 9 = Trouble

By: Claudia Mills

Age Level: 6-9 years old

The times tables causes third grader, Wilson, great anxiety as he struggles to learn them all...

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illustrated cover of A Computer Called Katherine showing a little girl looking up at the title above her.

A Computer Called Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Helped Put America on the Moon

By: Suzanne Slade

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Nonfiction

The inspiring true story of mathematician Katherine Johnson--made famous by the award-winning...

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A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars

By: Seth Fishman

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Earth is surrounded by stars of which the sun is only one. Earth is blue “because it is covered...

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Actual Size

By: Steve Jenkins

Age Level: 6-9 years old

The real and truly amazing size of animals from the sea and land are shown in a way that...

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Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Infographics

By: Steve Jenkins

Age Level: 6-9 years old

How many species are there across the globe? How much do all of the insects in the world...

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Ants Rule: The Long and Short of It

By: Bob Barner

Age Level: 6-9 years old

This is a colorful and fun-filled introduction to nonstandard measurement, comparison, and...

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Bedtime Math 2: This Time It’s Personal

By: Laura Overdeck

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Playful situations from familiar situations and activities make math come alive. Questions for...

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Betcha! Estimating

By: Stuart Murphy

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Two friends practice their estimating skills on their way to a store that's having a contest to...

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Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci

By: Joseph D'Agnese

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Nonfiction

As a young boy in medieval Italy, Leonardo Fibonacci thought about numbers day and night. He was...

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Cover for the children's nonfiction book Counting on Katherine

Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13

By: Halaine Becker

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Nonfiction

You've likely heard of the historic Apollo 13 moon landing. But do you know about the...

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Dinosaurs: By the Numbers

Dinosaurs: By the Numbers

By: Steve Jenkins

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Through infographics, illustrations, facts, and figures, readers will learn about the giants...

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Eating Fractions

By: Bruce MacMillan

Age Level: 6-9 years old

How do two children share one banana? Cut it in half, of course! Healthy foods are shared by...

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Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race

By: Margot Lee Shetterly, Winifred Conklin

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Nonfiction

The true story of four African American women whose talent and tenacity led to careers at NASA...

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How Big Is a Foot?

By: Rolf Myller

Age Level: 6-9 years old

The Queen's apprentice needs to build a new bed for the Queen. But how big is a bed when beds have...

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How Much Is a Million?

By: David Schwartz

Age Level: 6-9 years old

There are millions of people living in the United States, but the numbers are much too large to...

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How Tall, How Short, How Far Away?

By: David Adler

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Learn the units of measure (including the metric system) by comparing the lengths to fingers, arms...

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Just a Second

By: Steve Jenkins

Age Level: 6-9 years old

In just a second, a bat can make 200 calls, a black mamba snake can slither 24 feet, four babies...

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Lemonade for Sale

By: Stuart Murphy

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Four best friends start a lemonade business and make a bar graph to chart their growing sales....

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Maryam’s Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani

By: Megan Reid

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Nonfiction

As a little girl growing up in Tehran, Maryam Mirzakhani was spellbound by stories but she did...

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Math Curse

By: Jon Sciezka

Age Level: 6-9 years old

When the narrator begins to see math everywhere, she knows she’s suffering from a math curse!...

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Mathemagic! Number Tricks

By: Lynda Cogan

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Magic tricks and math come together, sure to engage sophisticated children. Clear explanations...

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Me and the Measure of Things

By: Joan Sweeney

Age Level: 6-9 years old

What’s the difference between a cup and an ounce? What gets measured in bushels and when do you use...

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Measuring Penny

By: Loreen Leedy

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Concept Book

A young girl named Lisa has a homework assignment to measure something in as many ways as she can...

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Millions to Measure

By: David M. Schwartz

Age Level: 6-9 years old

An entertaining look at linear, weight, and volume measurements, with Marvelossimo the Mathematical...

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Mind-Boggling Numbers

By: Michael J. Rosen

Age Level: 6-9 years old

If you could hike to the moon, how long would it take? Just how many glasses of lemonade would...

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Money Math: Addition and Subtraction

By: David A. Adler

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Cartoon versions of American presidents guide children through this lively introduction to...

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Mystery Math: A First Book of Algebra

By: David Adler

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Mysterious, humorously spooky illustrations and easy, engaging text demystifies the mystery of...

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One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab: A Counting by Feet Book

By: April Sayre, Jeff Sayre

Age Level: 6-9 years old

While you're on the beach, you can count from 1 to 10 by feet — combining numbers of feet and then...

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Pigeon Math

By: Asia Citro

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Concept Book

Telling a story about pigeons should be simple. But what's a narrator to do when the...

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Place Value

By: David Adler

Age Level: 6-9 years old

In this playful introduction to number values, readers are reminded that “Order is important in...

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a star in space

Stars

By: Seymour Simon

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Do aliens come from the stars? What is that twinkling out there? How long does it take for a...

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Superhero School

By: Aaron Reynolds

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Leonard is disappointed in superhero school; the only thing his teacher, The Blue Tornado, talks...

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Tally O'Malley

By: Stuart Murphy

Age Level: 6-9 years old

The O'Malley family is off to the beach, but it's a long, hot, boring drive. What can Eric, Bridget...

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The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos

By: Deborah Heiligman

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Paul Erdos grew up in Hungary and was always an unusual child. He enjoyed numbers, was inept at...

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The Girl With a Mind for Math: The Story of Raye Montague

By: Julia Finley Mosca

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Nonfiction

After touring a German submarine in the early 1940s, young Raye set her sights on becoming an...

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The Great Graph Contest

By: Loreen Leedy

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Chester the snail sets up a contest between his friends Gonk the toad and Beezy the lizard to see...

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illustrated cover of "The Kid's Book of Weather Forecasting" showing two children and various weather items

The Kid's Book of Weather Forecasting

By: Mark Breen, Kathleen Friestad

Age Level: 6-9 years old

In this hands-on science book, kids learn how to make a barometer, record their observations in...

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The Wing Wing Brothers: Carnival de Math

By: Ethan Long

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Math is all around when the Bird brothers, Woody, Willy, Wilmer, Wendell and Walter compete at...

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Tiger Math: Learning to Graph from a Baby Tiger

By: Ann Whitehead Nagda

Age Level: 6-9 years old

A Siberian tiger cub born at the Denver Zoo is orphaned when he is just a few weeks old. Through...

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You Can, Toucan, Math: Word Problem-Solving Fun

By: David Adler

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Various birds appear with riddles asking readers to use addition, subtraction, multiplication...

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Age Level: 9-12 years old

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Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer

By: Traci Sorell

Age Level: 9-12 years old

Nonfiction

Mary Golda Ross designed classified airplanes and spacecraft as Lockheed Aircraft Corporation's...

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Fractions in Disguise

By: Edward Einhorn

Age Level: 9-12 years old

Fraction-loving Mr. Factor goes on an exciting adventure to gain a prized possession.

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cover of Hidden Figures showing a sepia photo of a group of women

Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition

By: Margot Lee Shetterly

Age Level: 9-12 years old

Nonfiction

This edition of Margot Lee Shetterly’s acclaimed book is perfect for young readers. It is the...

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Secret Coders: Secrets & Sequences

By: Gene Luen Yang

Age Level: 9-12 years old

Can the three friends — Eni, Hopper, and Josh — foil the dastardly principal to save the day?...

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Solving for M

By: Jennifer Swender

Age Level: 9-12 years old

Fiction

When Mika starts fifth grade at the middle school, her neat life gets messy. Maybe, with some...

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Which One Doesn't Belong? A Shapes Book

By: Christopher Danielson

Age Level: 9-12 years old

Every colorful page contains a thoughtfully designed set of four shapes. Each of the shapes can...

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