Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When I was seven, my mother got a Mathematics degree. At 29, I got my own Mathematics degree—and of 60 people that day who got Math bachelor degrees then and there with me, only three were women. My mother proved, and those three co-graduating women proved, and Danica proves now, that women can learn math. But that's not what middle-school and high school girls think, is it? Most teen girls think they're math-morons. Danica has written this book for such math-panicked teen girls—Danica has written this book not only to TEACH them, but to ENCOURAGE them: "You can learn this!" The math covered in Danica's book is middle-school level—Danica presumes that the reader already knows how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; then Danica takes the reader up through Algebra I. Danica's math is solid; and Danica's explanations, easy to understand. But this is not your brother's math book. If you flipped through the book quickly, not reading the text, the illustrations and all the girly-handwriting would make you think that it was a book about teen fashion. The book also has chapter headings like no other math book I've seen—Chapter 7, for instance, is entitled, "Is Your Sister Trying to Cheat You Out of Your Fair Share? (Comparing Fractions)." Chapter 9, on complex fractions, starts out, "Say you're trying on an outfit for a party. You've got the dress, the shoes, and the earrings—and now you're choosing the right necklace...." Danica also includes three "testimonials" (profiles) of young women who are successful in their careers because they've mastered math. Rather than show three nerdettes, the three women profiled are BABES. To me, the most amazing thing about her book is that she tells the "blank quiz" story about herself: In a seventh-grade math class, "[w]hen the bell rang and my quiz was still blank, I wanted to disappear into my chair. I just didn't want to EXIST." When I read this book, I learned something. Not about math, but about people. Middle-school girls, in particular. I give this book a 4.99999999999999999...-star rating.