Millions, Billions &Trillions: Understanding Big Numbers

Book by David A. Adler

Review by Fatima Khan, Associate Producer, ReadingWithYourKids.com

What does a million or billion even look like? You hear these numbers in news reports and science figures, but do you really understand them? Millions, Billions & Trillions by David Adler and Edward miller does a fantastic job of explaining these huge numbers and putting them in terms and pictures even young kids can understand.

“Counting to a million would take days. Counting to a billion would take years. And counting to a trillion would be impossible. But when people talk about the population of large countries, it’s good to know how much a million and a billion are. When politicians talk about how much our government spends and how much money it owes, it’s good to know how much a trillion is.”

It’s hard for children and sometimes for even grown-ups to grasp the concept of such big numbers. I was never good at math when growing up so I know the struggle when trying to learn. I like the way this book explains the concept of understanding these large numbers. Large numbers can be hard to understand, especially for the little ones, author has uses children’s terms and fun examples to help teach children the importance of knowing big numbers. For example:

There are about one million granules of sugar in 1/4 cup.

The heads on ten thousand people together have about one billion hairs.

With a billion dollars, at five dollars a sundae, you could buy one thousand sundaes every day for more than five hundred years.

One trillion popped kernels of popcorn would fill two billion bags of popcorn — enough for about six bags for every person living in the United States. An author’s note tackles numbers even beyond a trillion such as Quadrillion, Quintillion & Sextilllion.

It is a beautiful and clever book helping children to grasp the bigger numbers and what they actually mean! As an adult, I even enjoyed learning about the interesting facts and information this children’s book provides.

This book was super fun and engaging!

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