Reviews
Posted by Elizabeth Bird on June 13, 2007
I've noticed a veritable plethora of books this year dealing with, of all ungodly subjects, math. It seemed innocent enough in The Puzzling World of Winston Breen. And I was willing to shut my eyes to it in The Lemonade War. But about the time I ran across a fictional work with a plot hinging on algebra (Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra by Wendy Lichtman) I began to suspect that I was losing my mind. Math and fiction? Why the world's gone all higglety-pigglety on us! Up is down! Right is wrong! Math is fun!
Buffalo News
Do the Math: Secrets, Lies and Algebra” by Wendy Lichtman (Greenwillow Books, 183 pages). Ages 10 and up.
Tess, an eighth grade math whiz who perceives the confusing world of middle school through math metaphors, wins our hearts — while teaching us a little algebra — in this charming and original book from former Buffalonian Wendy Lichtman.
For Tess, math can be useful in so many ways, whether it’s understanding the inequalities of middle school status (a popular athlete is greater than a math whiz) or using line segments and lines as a way to ponder the possibility of life after death. At the center of the story is a mystery — the suicide of a family friend and Tess’ mother’s suspicion that the dead woman’s husband may be guilty of foul play. (Lichtman on her Web site reports that this mystery was inspired by her own mother’s suspicions about a woman’s death in the Buffalo area.) Distressed by her mother’s unwillingness to go to the police, Tess starts her own investigation and discovers that some problems have no solutions.
Lichtman, who does math tutoring in California, masterfully weaves the concept of adolescents grappling with the unknown into a very compelling coming- of-age novel featuring realistic middleschool situations and appealing characters. It’s a book with humor, heart AND smarts — that magically makes math seem interesting, fun and useful.
Detroit Free Press
Another kind of magic is in the math of "Do the Math; Secrets, Lies and Algebra" by Wendy Lichtman (HarperTeen, $16.99). The book features a very contemporary story about a math wizard, 13-year-old Tess, who uses math in all of her notes as a code and to solve some problems and mysteries. The middle-school book has some adult themes but is very fun. If you have a math and puzzle lover at home, this should fit the equation for good reading.
Do the Math:
DO THE MATH: SECRETS, LIES, AND ALGEBRA by Wendy Lichtman
Category: Contemporary
Age Recommendation: Grades 6+
Release Date: 7/1/07
Publisher: Greenwillow
Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"
Rating: 4 Stars
Don’t panic! You won’t be asked to complete any math problems to read this book! Believe me, I checked.
Wendy Lichtman has created a fun mystery involving main character Tess, whose unique view of life has her imagining everything around her as it relates to math. Chapter headings include concepts such as “Graphs," “Tangents," “The Additive
Property of Equality," and “DNE” just to name a few.
Although the math concepts add creativity to the story, the real focus is on several mysteries. There is a questionable suicide, a stolen history test, and a possible cheating scandal to keep readers interested. Tess joins her friends in trying to solve the
mysteries. Along the way, she’ll share in secrets and lies that will test even the best of friendships.
Tess’s life is filled with interesting teachers, annoying boys, frustrating parents, and just about any other typical teen problem readers can imagine.
This is a book for the experienced as well as the reluctant reader. Math lovers might see this book as a reading challenge. Even math teachers would find this book fun. Wouldn’t students be shocked if some math teacher out there used it as read-aloud for end-of the-year math review?
Sun Sentinal
Secrets, Lies, and Algebra is a roller coaster ride for readers
By Andre Haughton
Boyd Anderson High School
July 26 2007
As a seventeen year old boy in high school the thought of reading a book about an eighth grade girl wasn't all that appealing. More than one of my friends as well as one teacher laughed when they glimpsed what I was reading. But from page one onward I was hooked on Wendy Lichtman's new book, Secrets, Lies, and Algebra.
Following a few weeks in the life of Tess, a preteen from the Bay area, the novel highlights Tess's unique way of seeing the world. For her, algebra is not just a class. Instead she uses math to analyze everything around her. From how she uses math shorthand to write things in her secret journal to the way she describes middle school hierarchy with inequalities, math is present through the entire work. But far from making it boring, it helps to make the story even more refreshing and vibrant.
Readers of all ages will appreciate the attention given to the correct portrayal of life in middle school. Lichtman certainly crafted a masterpiece with her use of proper and contemporary dialogue and intriguing characters. The story itself is not too shabby either.
When Tess witnesses cheating in the classroom she is immediately dismayed. Add to that the presence of a death and the suspicion of murder close to her and the stage is set for a page-turning adventure. How Tess handles each drama affects her relationship with her parents, friends, teachers, and even her view of herself.
What ensues is a roller coaster ride typical for teenagers but great for readers. In the end Tess proves herself as a talented, honorable, and reliable young woman. She is able to keep her own conscience clean by confessing what she knows, fix her fractured friendships with her bff's and regains faith in her mother. Of course with Lichtman at the helm this is all done as readers laugh out loud and continue reading on.
The book itself took me less than a day to read and I was actually disappointed to come to the end. Whereas when I had opened the book I had wondered why I was reading it, I now sighed and wondered when Lichtman would write a sequel.
Gumshoe Review
Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra was a wonderful book on many different levels. First, I'm a geek, and proud to be so. Tess's life is filled with a joy of math and the book is full of little doodles of tangents, parallel lines, Venn diagrams, and all the strange, yet finally comprehensible concepts of algebra. Calculus is a different matter, but luckily it plays no part here. Secondly, after years of hearing about schools with armed guards and metal detectors, Westlake School is exactly like I remember my junior high school. It's refreshing to know that pockets of normality and sanity still exist. Though bullies and cliques were bad enough, I guess I was lucky not to know that it really could be worse.
But Tess isn't looking back fondly. She's smack dab in the middle of eighth grade and suffering all the typical problems. People cheating on tests, backstabbing classmates, the struggle to live up to the trust given when breaking that trust would make your life so much easier. Fortunately, Tess has math to fall back on when she needs a little emotional fortification. And she does need some. Because there's the death next door, which has all the adults in a tizzy and that has a tendency to rock a teenager's world. Adults are suppose to know how to handle things, and when they start to flounder, what hope is there for teens? Then there's the suspicion of cheating on a big test. Tess has seen evidence, but has she seen what she thinks she saw? And if she did, should she tell? Would anyone believe her if she did?
There really isn't much mystery going on here, no sleuthing in the middle of the night with bad guys with guns or anything like that. The mystery is more based on a young girl struggling to understand the truths about the world and her place within it. The people around her aren't good or evil, they just are. And perhaps the most profound of all lessons that algebra teaches her is that sometimes there just isn't and answer. It's not hidden, or too hard, sometimes it just simply doesn't exist. When you're dealing with questions of life and death, that's a hard lesson for many to digest. But with a few doodles and a short explanation from Tess, perhaps some of the glories of eight grade math class will come flooding back, along with memories of those incredibly confusing times and the way it affected our lives for years to come. For the one thing that's absolute about being a teenager ... nobody escapes unchanged.
