The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos by Deborah Heiligman (review)

This picture-book biography introduces children to the twentieth-century Hungarian mathematician notable for his work with prime numbers and his peculiar social habits. The main body of the text focuses on the latter, tracing Erdos' early obsession with numbers, his rebellion against home and school rules, his inability to perform such simple tasks as cutting his food or doing his laundry, and the (generally) good-natured accommodations made by friends and colleagues who hosted the savant on his continent-hopping lectures. While younger readers can revel in these oddities, older students will delve deeper into the dense back matter that provides extensive details about Erdos' family history and his many mathematical interests. Hints at these are often cleverly imbedded within the lively, humorous artwork (a solution to his challenge to dissect a square into smaller squares of different sizes serves as the background to a dinner scene), and a diagram of mathematicians and their "Erdos Numbers," assigned by whether they personally worked Erdos (#1) or worked with somebody else who worked with Erdos (#2), humorously conveys his influence. Pair this with Don Brown's Odd Boy Out (BCCB 10/04) to compare genius eccentricities, or hand it to middle-grade lovers of math puzzles—opened to the notes.