Harry Sitomer

This book teaches the reader that every number is important and means something, even the number zero! The author gives many examples of how zero is an important number; the number zero is important for things like measurements, blasting a rocket ship, starting a race, and even sports. I also learned from this book that the symbol for zero found its way into our place value by people who lived in Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean. The people wanted to find out how many soldiers they had, so they used pebbles and a place value system to find out. As a future teacher, I feel as if this is a great book to read to students to help them understand the importance of a number and where it came from as well.… (meer)

Thinking about zero is nothing seems strange and contradicting since we generally think of nothing. It can be confusing at first but the number zero has its use and value in which we incorporate in our everyday life. You can see zero being use as placeholders for lining up numbers vertically when it comes to adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. Others include measuring, counting, weighting, money, and etc. In addition, there's the culture of how zero is used in various countries.

Thinking about today's world, I actually realize how important zero is in the world in which I live in. Because without zero, I can't count easily and properly. Also, zero is used in the the base ten system and without it, counting wouldn't feel natural to us since we were taught to count at the age of six and up. Despite that the book was written and published in 1978, its knowledge still is applicable to help children understand how zero is significant in which they will incorporate in learning. I definitely would use this book to talk about number properties and the importance and value of zero.… (meer)

When we think of zero we generally think of nothing. But is zero is nothing? Technically yes. Confusing right? Well no worries because this book does a great job at explaining everything that zero can be. To my surprise, the number zero is actually a lot of things. The number zero is present in money, the study of space, sports, weight, measuring, and temperature. What I loved most about this book is how the author incorporated how different cultures use the number zero as well. For example, 3000 years ago the Hindus in India were the earliest people to use a symbol for zero. I learned a lot from this book, I had no idea there were that many uses for the number zero. I would definitely have this book in my classroom.… (meer)

Even though this is an older book, the point of knowing what zero is comes across pretty well. I would like to have seen a little more explanation on some of the points made in the book, but for younger children, the basics do make sense. I like how the authors started the book off with a riddle. It gets any reader engaged, especially if they don't know the solution. I also like how they ended the book references the initial riddle to determine if the content of the book helped the reader solve the riddle. Even though I would categorize this book for elementary school children, I could use this riddle in my 9th grade class to see if the students can think a little out of the box and to see how many students can answer it correctly without any other assistance.… (meer)