Readathon: Frequently Asked Questions

Mathical is a children’s book prize and a book giveaway program.

We cultivate a book list that sparks a joy of math for children of all ages. We give away tens of thousands of free books annually to low-income children through Title I schools.

The Mathical List features fiction and nonfiction for young people – including early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school. Over 150 titles are included. All of them inspire a love of math in the everyday world.

Mathical Books are not workbooks or textbooks. They are graphic novels, biographies, picture books, chapter books, and more.

We believe math belongs to all students. It is everywhere in the world around us. Join us!

We are going to see how many books we can read together in the United States from September 2024 through June 2025.

All educators PreK-Grade 8 are eligible – no matter what subject you teach. Sign ups are welcome year-round.

Along the way, you can expect a bit of extra math fun, with puzzles, a mystery reveal, and hands-on math activities to supplement the books read.

What do we mean by Powers of Ten? Watch a classic video about Powers of Ten, an adventure in magnitudes and how things grow bigger and bigger! We also have a post about powers of ten with more resources, too.

You can check to see if a book is included on this page. The Powers of Ten Readathon focuses on Mathical Book Prize award-winning books.

All books have been carefully chosen by a committee of teachers, librarians, early childhood experts, mathematicians, and more.

The Mathical Books program is organized by the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), a national resource for mathematics supported by the National Science Foundation.

The Mathical Book Prize is presented in partnership with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).

• Visit your school library or local public library
• Purchase books from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Bookshop page for Mathical
• Find audiobooks or read-alouds online (courtesy of author & publisher permission)

Title I schools with library staff can apply for Mathical Collection Development Awards annually in early fall. Sign up for the Mathical newsletter to be notified, or watch this page on the School Library Journal website.

Yes, there are milestones for each power of ten – 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 books read at your school. You unlock benefits with each milestone.

How do we hit those big numbers?

• Have more than one teacher sign up from your school.
• Teachers of any grade level (PreK-8) are eligible.
• Teachers of any subject are eligible.
• Results are compiled within each school by the Mathical staff.

Yes! If you have 20 students and you read a book aloud, each student would record the read-aloud as one book. So, you would record 20 “books read.”

Just think how many books we can enjoy reading together with those read-alouds!

Classroom tools include downloadable and printable PDFs of:

• An 8.5 x 14″ classroom calendar poster (to track your class’s reading each month)
• An 8.5 x 11″ journal page, which serves as a student log to track books read
• An 8.5 x 11″ badge page, where students can color in a new badge each month

Each month, you will receive a mini-newsletter by email with fun math puzzles and links to classroom resources to share a love of playful math concepts with your students. Fun math activities range from PreK, through Elementary & Middle School.

Do your students enjoy pizza? We encourage you to consider submitting your Mathical Books reading totals to the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program. We are not affiliated in any way with this program or Pizza Hut; however, this would let your students earn additional pizza rewards for reading.

Your students might enjoy the “Math Reveal” calculator created by Desmos (coming soon!), with artwork provided by a Mathical author and illustrator TBA.

GRADE LEVEL: Yes, you can get a rough idea based on the grade levels for which the Mathical Award (or Honor Book status) was given. You can search the Mathical List by grade level on the Mathical site.

MATH TOPIC: The best starting place we have at the moment is the collection of reading guides published on the Mathical website.

READING DIFFICULTY, GENRE/FORMAT, ETC: For more detailed information, we recommend the free resources at Teaching Books. The full Mathical List is comprehensively cataloged on their website, and we thank them.

You can see a list of Mathical award-winning books which have Spanish language translations at this blog post on the Mathical website.

We will not turn anyone away. You are welcome to sign up for the Readathon so you receive all the communications (all the fun stuff, resources, etc.)

For counting up total reads & “official results,” only qualifying classrooms will be tallied.

Yes! You can easily do this at the Teaching Books website. The full Mathical List is comprehensively cataloged on their website, and we thank them.

We respectfully acknowledge the painful role that jelly beans have played in the history of U.S. civil rights, when Black Americans were denied voter registration in the South based on a variety of spurious tests of fitness to cast their ballot. Correctly estimating the number of jellybeans in a jar was one such fallacious test. To learn more: 

• “Exhibit Traces History of Voting Rights Act,” NBC News, published August 5, 2005.
• “Selma rev F.D. Reese set civil rights example early on,” Montgomery Adviser, published March 1, 2015.