From the Classroom to the World of Stories
I am a maths teacher, and over the years I have had the privilege of watching children discover mathematics in many different ways.
I have also seen that mathematics can sometimes appear intimidating, abstract, or disconnected from children's everyday lives. Yet behind every number, every calculation, and every mathematical idea or object lies a fascinating story—a question, a problem, an observation, or a human discovery.
This is what inspired me to create this collection of children's books.
What if children could meet mathematics through stories?
What if numbers could become characters with personalities, friendships, doubts, strengths, and weaknesses? What if mathematical concepts could become adventures that children could experience rather than simply rules they have to remember?
This collection is my attempt to explore those questions.
My Goals
As a maths teacher, I want to feed children's mathematical appetite and curiosity from an early age.
My aim is not simply to teach children how to calculate. I want them to wonder why mathematics exists, where ideas come from, and how mathematics helps us understand the world around us.
But I also believe that learning mathematics can contribute to something much bigger.
In my stories, mathematics and human experience meet.
My Expectations
I hope these books will reach children who already love mathematics—and, perhaps even more importantly, children who do not yet think that mathematics is for them.
I want a child to finish a story and feel curious enough to ask another question.
I want parents to discover that a bedtime story can also open the door to a mathematical conversation.
And I want teachers to be able to use these stories as starting points for exploration and discussion in the classroom.
Above all, I hope children will discover that mathematics is not just something that happens on a page in a school exercise book.
Mathematics is all around us.
The Challenge
Creating these books is a challenge because I am trying to bring together several worlds: the precision of mathematics and the imagination of storytelling, and their match is not always obvious.
As a teacher, I know how important it is to get the mathematics right. As an author, I want the stories to be engaging and memorable. And as someone who cares about children's development, I want the characters to face genuine emotional challenges and grow through their experiences.
Finding the right balance between these elements is perhaps the greatest challenge of the project.
I do not want to turn mathematics into another lesson disguised as a story.
I want the story to make children curious about the mathematics.
And perhaps the greatest success would be for a child to close one of these books and immediately ask:
“But why?”
Because that question is where learning begins.
