Part memoir, part monologue, with a pinch of self-deprecation and a dash of startling honesty, There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say features biographies of legendary historical figures from which Paula Poundstone can't help digressing to tell her own story. Mining gold from the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc and Beethoven, among others, the eccentric and utterly inimitable mind of Paula Poundstone dissects, observes, and comments on the successes and failures of her own life with surprising candor and spot-on comedic timing in this unique laugh-out-loud book.   

If you like Paula Poundstone's ironic and blindingly intelligent humor, you'll love this wryly observant, funny, and touching book.

Release date:  November 7, 2006.  Available for pre-order.  

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Are you looking for a fun way to engage students in improving and retaining their mathematical skills? Whether your students need a curricular supplement, a summer review package, or an opportunity to do math at home with parents, humor them with Math with a Laugh.

Math with a Laugh brings together math practice and comedy-some would say for the first time-offering students and teachers funny and functional skills-development experiences. Longtime math teacher Faye Nisonoff Ruopp provides problems carefully crafted to help children strengthen their mathematical thinking. Faye's former student, star comedian Paula Poundstone, sets the problems within funny stories so entertaining to read and solve that students will become immersed in the mathematics.

In The Sticky Problem of Parallelogram Pancakes fourth and fifth graders solve a variety of developmentally appropriate problems involving number sense, geometry, measurement, algebra, data, and probability. Each problem links directly to state and national standards and increases students' capabilities with foundational and computational principles. The Math with a Laugh series reinforces basic skills and improves retention in class, over the summer, or at home. Ruopp's teaching notes provide answers and help you reinforce the concepts behind the problems, then extend them into other mathematical learning.

In Venn Can We Be Friends? sixth and seventh graders solve a variety of developmentally appropriate problems involving operations with fractions and decimals, applying order of operations, solving linear equations, graphing Cartesian coordinates, determining surface area and volume, and graphing statistical data. Each problem links directly to state and national standards and increases students' capabilities with foundational and computational principles. The Math with a Laugh Series reinforces basic skills and improves retention in class, over the summer, or at home. Ruopp's teaching notes provide answers and help you reinforce the concepts behind the problems, then extend them into other mathematical learning.

In You Can't Keep Slope Down eighth and ninth graders encounter age-appropriate problems involving ratios and proportions, simplification of numerical expressions, identification of the meaning of variables and constants, the solving of polynomials and quadratics, the application of the Pythagorean theorem, and the measurement of central tendency in a dataset. Each problem links directly to state and national standards and increases students' capabilities with foundational and computational principles. Math with a Laugh reinforces basic skills and improves retention in class, over the summer, or at home. Ruopp's teaching notes provide answers and help you reinforce the concepts behind the problems, then extend them into other mathematical learning.