Blog post #3- Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday

1.The children book I chose is “Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday” by Judith Viorst. In the beginning of the book the main character Alexander is talking about how unfair it is that his brother Anthony and his other brother Nicholas have more money than him. Alexander complains about his lack in money and that he only has bus tokens. Every time Alexander is rich he knows he will end up only with bus tokens, because he used to be rich last Sunday. He used to be rich last Sunday because Grandma Betty and Grandpa Louie came to visit from New Jersey. They brought gifts for everyone in the family, lox for his father, plants for his mother and they brought one dollar for Alexander and his brothers. His brothers and him love money especially him. His mother told him to save the dollar if he really wanted to buy a walkie-talkie, but saving money is hard for Alexander. After Alexander received the dollar he went and bought candy, did multiple bets, lost money, spent recklessly and when he was going to actually save the money he realize he had zero. Alexander tried to gain his money by searching in Pearson’s telephone booth for nickels and dimes that people sometimes forget, but failed. He went to desperate measures by trying to make his tooth to fall out and putting it below his pillow to get a quarter, but failed again. He gave up and told his grandpa and grandma to come back soon.

2. The mathematical concept behind the book is Finance and compound interest. Even though the compound interest formula isn't in the story, it can relate in the context of saving money. It is related to finance because Alexander doesn't know how to manage his money and struggles investing and saving money to buy the walkie-talkie. Alexander the main character starts with an amount of one dollar and every paragraph subtracts the amount he spent in that paragraph eventually leading to zero. I like it a lot because he spent little amounts of money every paragraph and it is written like if he was actually rich. It is very interesting because kids need to pay attention to every amount of money spent and it has an entertaining story with it. What also makes this math concept easy to learn and entertaining is that kids can relate to the reckless spending when their family give them money.

3. Literature is an effective way for children to learn mathematical concepts because it teaches them the fundamentals since an early age and in a fun way. If they learn math in a fun way they will relate math with fun and won’t struggle in the future like most of us do. Children will also know since an early stage i their life that math is completely related to life.