Picture books are a fabulous tool for engaging children with mathematical concepts. By capturing a child’s imagination, picture book stories make the process of learning about abstract math concepts, such as multiplication, more interesting, relevant and meaningful. The multiplication books in this list help children learn to think mathematically and learn to understand and apply multiplication strategies such as skip counting, making arrays and repeated addition.
Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream by Cindy Neuschwander
Amanda Bean is a counting machine but is there a quicker way to work out how many? A story written to explicitly teach the purpose of multiplication and a great tool for exploring repeated addition and arrays as multiplication strategies. The illustrations provide a wealth of multiplication problem solving opportunity too!
The Best of Times by Gregory Tang
Helpful strategies for solving multiplication problems from one to ten are included within engaging rhymes.
Each Orange Had 8 Slices by Paul Giganti
A book of multiplication problems told within real life scenarios, each page provides an opportunity to put the multiplication strategies you are learning to use to solve the questions posed.
Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar by Masaichiro Anno
I love that every page of Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar can be used as an opportunity to invite children to solve a multiplication problem. The book goes on to explain the factorial concept to children.
One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor J Pinczes
In rhymed verse one hundred hungry ants hurry to sample the delights of a picnic, but marching in single file seems too slow for 100 empty tummies. The smallest ant of all suggests they travel in formations that represent different ways of arranging 100, providing a useful too for discussion of arrays.
Eggs and Legs: Counting by Twos, Lots of Ladybugs: Counting by Fives and Toasty Toes: Counting by Tens by Michael Dahl
A great series for introducing or reinforcing skip counting as a multiplication strategy.
Each book on our list is linked to an Amazon page where you can find reviews and age recommendations for those titles you are not personally familiar with.
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Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
