Infinity and Me is a new book, written by Kate Hosford with illustrations by Gabi Swiatkowska, that explores the nature of infinity. Uma, an eight-year-old girl, begins wondering, as she looks up at the sky one night:

How many stars were in the sky?
A million? A billion?
Maybe the number was as
big as infinity.

I started to feel very,
very small. How
could I even think
about something as
big as infinity?

Uma tries to understand the concept of infinity by asking people – friends, her grandmother, and other adults – how they imagine infinity. Along the way she considers the concept of “forever” and thinks about what she would want to do forever, if anything. She imagines having recess forever, for example – and then reflects, “But if there’s no school before recess, and no school after recess, it it really recess anymore?”

The story is captivating and can provoke, in addition to discussions of infinity, conversations about time and space, numbers, imagination, friendship and love, and, I expect, many other topics!


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Jana

Thanks, Christy! You can find the book on amazon (there's a link in the post). Glad you like the blog!

christyk

Oh, I am so thrilled to have discovered your blog! So many great book ideas!

A few years ago one of my kids was obsessed with the idea of infinity. He wanted to know if infinity plus minus infinity equaled zero, and if you could have an infinity of objects or if the concreteness of objects would make infinity impossible.

I'll have to see where I can find a copy of this book.