Count the Stars
Raewyn Caisley and Gabriel Evans
Walker Books

No matter what young Maddie sees or does, her everyday world is full of mathematical ideas; that’s just how she sees it, thinks about it and loves it. Perhaps it’s the early morning sunlight streaming through her bedroom blinds; then there are those fractions in her piano practice, the symmetry in flowers, the tessellating pattern in the pathway she and Dad make together,

the wealth of opportunities to count things in nature and much more besides.
Almost all the time Maddie is happy and comfortable in how she looks at the world, but very occasionally she notices that it makes her different from her friends – ‘an odd-shaped brick that didn’t fit into the pattern.’ This happens when some friends come to play: whereas Maddie focuses on the mathematical transformations involved in making hats for her dolls,, Grace and Olivia’s only interest is the dolls. Similar when they make cupcakes, her friends are interested in the decorations on the tops, Maddie in contrast, loves measuring out the ingredients.

One day in school when Maddie and her classmates are busy making paper snowflakes, she wishes there was somebody with whom she could share her love of geometry. She doesn’t notice that perhaps there is, in the shape of a new girl, Priya; and for the next few days Maddie feels downcast.

Fortunately though, her perceptive Dad has a surprise in store. That night he organises a night-time playdate with Priya and they pay a visit to the observatory. An unforgettable experience for sure and one that leaves Maddie thinking an absolutely massive, mathematical what if …

From cover to cover and endpaper to endpaper, this is a wonderful, multi-layered book. Apart from being a terrific, superbly illustrated story, it’s overflowing with classroom potential, starting perhaps with a discussion on ways of seeing. I love that it shows how the imagination and creative thinking, and a fascination with facts, can sit side by side, as well as demonstrating the vital importance of notions of what if … as the basis for all new discoveries.