My books

For an indie business, weekends are just another workday. But I suppose with the pandemic and so many people working at home, perhaps that’s true of everyone these days.

I finished the index work on Prealgebra & Geometry Games, and I think I might have the book layout under control. Time to order a proof copy.

I can get an instant digital proof. It looks just like the file I already have on my computer. But the physical book is a whole different thing from a computer file. There are always surprises.

So I want to see a real proof — an actual paperback copy — before I release a book to readers. Wouldn’t you?

And that may be a problem.

Continue reading The Problem with Books These Days

“Denise’s books are always the first math books I recommend to parents. I have used them both with co-ops and at home, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her latest book, Prealgebra & Geometry Games, because there is SUCH a need for games at this level! I could even scale down many of the games for my second grader. Middle school moms and those with math loving kids of any age, check this out!”

—Casey Ogg Maupin
Big Juicy Conversations about Math (Facebook group)

UPDATE: The Kickstarter deals have ended, but my playful math books are still available through your favorite online store or by special order at your local bookshop. (Except for the Prealgebra & Geometry Games book, scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my email list to get the latest news.)

Continue reading It’s Almost Gone

Still working on my Prealgebra & Geometry Games book. I’m amazed at how much of learning math is really about language.

With the current layout, the book will be 250+ pages long, depending on how the index turns out. A total of 41 games plus four math investigation activities. I’ve defined more than 100 vocabulary words — so averaging more than two new math words per game.

Of course, several of these are words (or at least concepts) students will have learned before. But a large part of prealgebra is consolidating previous ideas and mastering their names (sum, quotient, factor, multiple, etc.) before moving on to apply them in algebra class.

But it’s not all review! There’s a cool game about polar coordinates, a rabbit trail into combinatorics, and plenty of other challenges to keep students learning.

And plenty of clear definitions for adult readers who have long ago forgotten all the math terms they learned in school.

Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School is scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my newsletter to get updates.

Gel pens are wonderful for editing because they show up so well against the manuscript text. Each pass gets a new color. The picture above is the 5th cycle through my Prealgebra & Geometry Games index, this time with purple ink.

When I printed the output from cycle #4, everything looked so neat in three columns with alphabet headers in place. I thought, “This is almost done!”

Moral: Don’t judge an index by how nice it looks.

Still, it’s also not as bad as the marked-up pages make it seem. Only a few of those will be major tweaks. (Like, how did we not notice that the Jack Lyon quote got left out of the reference section?!)

Plenty of work to go, but the end is in sight…

Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School is scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my newsletter to get updates.

With the less-than-help of my daughter’s cat, I’ve made it through several cycles of editing my Prealgebra & Geometry index. If you’re curious about the process, you may enjoy my behind-the-scenes peek at How to DIY a Nonfiction Index.

There’s yet a ways to go, but it’s starting to look like what I want. The index includes game listings by category: card games, pencil and paper games, cooperative games, solitaires, etc.

One of the entries is “Games, Complete List of.”

So I counted…

Officially, the book features 41 games that help prepare students for high school math by playing with number properties, mixed operations, integers, algebraic functions, coordinate geometry, and more.

But when I counted all the official game listings plus all the game variations that were different enough to have their own names — 62 games.

Wow!

Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School is scheduled for publication in early 2021. Sign up for my newsletter to get updates.