Algebra Survival Guide

Expanded and revised, the Second Edition Algebra Survival Guide throws a lifeline for students learning algebra at earlier ages than ever before.

As algebraic thinking is now mandated in the upper elementary grades (5th and 6th), the Second Edition Algebra Survival Guide provides gentle but vital help to these students and older students as well.

The language of algebra can be challenging, but the Algebra Survival Guide decodes its lingo, explaining it in standard English. It calls this process turning “Mathlish” into English.

The book’s very format also tames the overwhelming nature of algebra. Each page is a self-contained mini-lesson with its own practice problems at the bottom. This way students focus without feeling stressed. What’s more, each page is set up in a Q&A format so students hear their own questions echoed in the text, then answered in the voice of a friendly tutor.

Lighthearted cartoons by award-winning artist Sally Blakemore, sprinkled throughout the text, not only provide comic relief, they also offer visual ways to grasp algebraic concepts.

While the book reaches down to the algebraic thinking learned in the elementary grades, it also reaches up to the algebra taught in the middle school years. The book covers the key concepts in a standard Algebra 1 curriculum:  Algebraic Properties, Sets of Numbers, Positive and Negative Numbers, Order of Operations, Absolute Value, Exponents, Radicals, Factoring, Cancelling, Solving Equations, the Coordinate Plane, and Word Problems.

The Second Edition addresses one of algebra’s toughest topic areas: algebraic word problems. In a new 62-page chapter, the book teaches strategies for algebra’s advanced word problems, focusing in particular on problems involving rate, time and distance, work performed, mixture formulas, and even those crazy problems about Joe being three years older than four times Jane’s age 10 years in the future.

The 352-page Second Edition, retailing for $19.95,  is distributed by Midpoint Trade Books of New York City.

Josh Rappaport of Santa Fe, NM

Josh Rappaport is the author of the Parents' Choice award-winning Algebra Survival Guide, the Algebra Survival Workbook and PreAlgebra Blastoff. Josh is co-author with Trudy Bortz of the Card Game Roundup books. Josh has taught middle school and high school, and for the last 25 years has been president of the Now I Get It! Learning Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he teaches and tutors children of all ages. Josh and his wife Kathy also coach students worldwide to success on the SAT and ACT college entrance exams.

Sally Blakemore, an award winning paper-engineer and book designer www.artyprojects.com, has illustrated for Esquire Magazine, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Oppenheimer Funds; and books, for Singing Turtle Press, Perseus Press, Western National Parks Press, Gibbs Smith Books, North Carolina Press, Michigan Press, and Texas Press, to name a few. She lives in Santa Fe, NM.