Ann Whitehead Nagda - Polar Bear Math. Learning About Fractions from Klondike and Snow

C INDYS H USBAND , S TEVE , P LAYS WITH S NOW .

H I, THERE, FOOTBALL FANS!

K LONDIKE TRIES TO TOUCH THE CHILDREN .

T IME FOR A NAP .

B IG BROTHERS PLAY ROUGH SOMETIMES .

L ETS WALK TOGETHER .

L EFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT

POLAR BEAR MATH

L EARNING ABOUT F RACTIONS FROM K LONDIKE AND S NOW

BY A NN W HITEHEAD N AGDA AND C INDY B ICKEL

H ENRY H OLT AND C OMPANY

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Thanks to Roberta Flexer, Lisa Mesple, Phyllis Perry, Candy Hyde, Marcy Lockhart, Judy Minger, Linda Erickson, Fran Jenner, Shelley Fitzgerald, Penny Altberg, Kirit Nagda, and Reka Simonsen, my patient and supportive editor, for helping with the math

To Cindy Bickel, Dave Kenny, Angela Baier, Clayton Freiheit, and all the other wonderful people who work and volunteer at the Denver Zoo A. W. N.

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Denver Zoo veterinary technician Denny Roling, my friend and colleague, who loved all the zoo animals and was especially fond of Klondike and Snow C. B.

D ENNY WITH K LONDIKE, HIS FAVORITE BEAR .

An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers

POLAR BEAR MATH. Text and story concept copyright 2004 by Ann Whitehead Nagda. Photographs copyright 2004 by the Denver Zoological Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in China. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC and are used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC.

Photo credits: All images by Cindy Bickel with the following exceptions:

Dave Kenny: (bottom).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nagda, Ann Whitehead Polar bear math : learning about fractions from Klondike and Snow / by Ann Whitehead Nagda and Cindy Bickel.

p. cm.

Summary: Uses charts and recipes for bear milk prepared for two baby polar bears born in a zoo to teach about fractions.

1. FractionsJuvenile literature. [1. Fractions. 2. Polar bear. 3. Bears. 4. AnimalsInfancy.] I. Bickel, Cindy. II. Title. QA117.N24 2004 513.26dc22 2003020996

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37749-6 / ISBN-10: 0-312-37749-5

Originally published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company

First Square Fish Edition: January 2008

Designed by Christy Hale

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.squarefishbooks.com

Klondike and Snow are trademarks of the Denver Zoological Foundation, Inc. Used with permission. We are grateful for the cooperation of the Denver Zoo, Denver, Colorado.

A NEWBORN BEAR IS JUST A HANDFUL .

Most people never see newborn polar bear cubs, because they stay in a den with their mother until they are three or four months old. But when a polar bear mother at the Denver Zoo abandoned her cubs, the public got to witness their struggle to survive from the day they were born. This book uses charts and recipes for bear milk to help tell the story of Klondike and Snow, two polar bears who were hand-raised at the Denver Zoo. If you want to read the story of the bear cubs without the math, you can read only the right-hand pages of this book. Then to learn more and see how fractions were used while raising the bears, you can look at the left-hand pages as well.

A fraction is a part of a whole or a part of a group, or set. Here is a set of animals: three mother bears. Each mother bear is one part, or one fraction, of the set.

3 MOTHER BEARS

The total number of equal parts in a set is always on the bottom of the fraction and is called the denominator. The number of parts you are dealing with is always on the top of the fraction and is called the numerator.

On average, two out of every three mother polar bears have twin babies. We can show this with the fraction below. In this fraction the denominator is 3, because there are three bears in the set, and the numerator is 2, because two of the bears in this set have twins.

Of the three mother bears, one does not have twins. We can show this with the fraction below. In this fraction the denominator is still 3, but the numerator is 1, because one bear does not have twins.

So