THE CURIOUS CHILD by Donni Floyd

THE CURIOUS CHILD by Donni Floyd
(Outskirts Press, ISBN 978-1-5980-0046-7, 2008, $11.95)
(a book review by Mark R. Leeper)

THE CURIOUS CHILD is the first children's book written by Donni
Floyd, formerly a pop music star and a model. (Perhaps it is an
appropriate choice for my first children's book to review. The
author and I are both first-timers.) The book is apparently for
children in the age range of five to nine. The brevity is
appropriate to that age group. There are nine pages of text,
about right for a short bedtime read.

Floyd's intended purpose is that children should unafraid to ask
questions. From the illustrations the story seems to take place
on a South Pacific island that is inhabited by both people and
dragons. A boy who asks many questions of many people is sent to
see a wise old dragon who might have a spell to cure him of the
habit. The people who send him do not know that the dragon has
become old and dangerous. The dragon gives the boy three
questions but will eat the boy if none of the questions stumps
him. The first two questions the dragon answers flippantly and
falsely, but the boy seems not to notice. The boy's third
question is how many numbers are there in all. The dragon tries
counting all numbers and is tied up with the problem ever after.

The book may send mixed signals about the value of curiosity.
The unnamed boy finds that asking the right question at the right
moment gets him out of a dangerous situation with a dragon, but
he was in that mortal danger because he had asked too many
questions previously. The fact that the boy nearly died as a
result of bothering too many people with questions might not be
quite the right idea to send to children.

On the other hand there are some unexpected positive touches in
the book. The boy does not defeat the dragon by force or
destructiveness. He bests the dragon by using intelligence. His
question for the dragon is a simply stated but complex
mathematical question and may serve to ignite some rudimentary
mathematical interest in the book's audience.

I was left with two questions--and I feel impelled to ask them.
On such a small island why had the people not heard that their
dragon had turned deadly? And why was the dragon more willing
to be more serious about the third question than he had been with
the first two.

Grethel Peralta's illustrations add a definite charm to the
story, though they are not entirely consistent as to how the
dragon is pictured.

This lesson in asking questions may satisfy and inspire the
child, but only if he does not ask too many questions.

[Incidentally the boy's third question was originally answered by
the famous mathematician Georg Cantor who said it was one kind of
infinity he called "aleph-one." If we are, like the dragon is
apparently, interested only in the whole counting numbers the
correct answer is another smaller kind of infinity called "aleph-
zero."]


Mark R. Leeper
mleeper.RemoveThis@optonline.net
Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper