(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Satwik Gade. Born in 1887 in southern India, Srinivasa Ramanujan would, before his untimely death in 1920, become one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. In an admiring view of an extraordinary individual, Narayanan chronicles Ramanujan's life: from curious young son of a clerk who sees numbers and patterns wherever he gazes, to his travels to Cambridge, England, where he impresses Europe's greatest mathematicians with his novel approaches to numerical thinking, and finally to his illness-induced return to India and death. The clear and succinct text explains Ramanujan's mathematical ideas in a thoroughly understandable manner. Gade's vivid digital art displays Ramanujan's unique mathematical daydreams for readers, helping them to begin to see the patterns that fascinated him. Numbers, patterns, graphs, and diagrams are scattered within most spreads, helping convey the idea that his mind never strayed from his obsession with numbers. Significant back matter (including an informative author's note, a glossary, and an explanation of magic squares) allows Narayanan to fully flesh out Ramanujan's continued importance to both the field of mathematics and the people of India.

Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2023

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Daniel Miyares. This eloquently written picture-book biography gives voice to the brilliant--and self-taught--mathematician Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan. Born in South India in the late nineteenth century, Ramanujan was a late talker, and when he finally did speak, his unusual questions set him apart. "What is small?...And what is big?" As the boy thought long and hard about infinity, "numbers leaped and roared." However, "in school, numbers were different, stiff and straight, obeying the rules." After he flunked out of college (he ignored his non-math courses), his mother arranged a ­marriage for him, and he ­eventually found work as a clerk in Madras. Encouraged by local mathematicians and his British supervisors, he wrote letters to the top mathematicians at Cambridge University. In 1914, Ramanujan traveled to England, eager to share his mathematical insights--and to no longer feel isolated, "like the first man in the world with no one to hear me speak." Alznauer employs a handful of Tamil words to good effect, and articulately conveys the concept of infinity. She also revisits, quite poignantly, Ramanujan's spiritual anchor--his grandmother's dream of a Hindu goddess who promised to "write the thoughts of God on [his] tongue." Miyares's ink-wash illustrations play with light and dark in realistic scenes and whimsical number-filled spreads. An author's note includes further biographical details and explains that many of the thoughts and quotes are "inspired by" Ramanujan's actual words; a bibliography is also appended.

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2020