A Gebra Named Al

Today we finished the worst book we've read in a long long time.

I'd heard great things in homeschool catalogs about A Gebra Named Al by Wendy Isdell. A book to help students understand algebra. A book to light a fire of interest in mathematics. And so forth.

We started reading it. The story started with the main character falling asleep, so that the story was set up that it was likely a dream. I hate those.

The story went on to having a whole bunch of characters named after elements in the periodic table. It talked about isotopes. It did cover the Order of Operations in arithmetic, but it was much more about science than about math.

The writing was poor. Unnecessary dialogue. Extraneous information. A simplistic plot taken from Wizard of Oz, but without any character development or subplots.

About 3/4 of the way through the book, we discovered that the author was a girl. The book was written in junior high, won a fiction-writing contest, and then was published before she finished high school. Well, it's really not bad when you take into account the age and inexperience of the author. But on its own merits, the book was just pretty awful to read. This is not a book to read for enjoyment; it would be read purely for Educational Purposes. Problem was, it didn't do a good job of teaching either.

We didn't care for Phantom Tollbooth either. But it was far superior to the Gebra book. In case any of my friends have considered spending their few homeschool dollars on this book, or spending a few hours reading it aloud, I would suggest you not bother.