Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 04/04/2025 Gr 1–4—Albee constructs a conversational, matter-of-fact narrative about the many years humans calculated on counting boards, used their fingers, put knots in strings and beads on lines, all for the lack of a—nothing. Until the Babylonians around 300 BCE, there was no such thing as a placeholder for single digits, tens, hundreds, and beyond. It's another 500–700 years before a mathematician in ancient India uses zero not only as a placeholder, but a number. Then comes adoption—not everyone is a fan of zero, including the Christians fighting a holy war against Muslims, suspicious of zero's Indian/Arabic associations. A brilliant unfolding and pacing of the narrative bring order to the near-misses and chaos of zero's origins, shored up by the various obstacles readers can discover in the time line. That calculus and algebra were also invented along the way feels nothing short of miraculous. Hsu's global scenes are cheerful and accessible, with pages that show people counting, adding, sorting, much as children do. It all adds up to an epic story of the little nothing that could, and did, launch or change engineering, modern physics, computing, and electronics forever. VERDICT Educators can build an entire lesson around zero, especially given the thoughtful resources and chatty time line provided in the back matter.—Kimberly Olson Fakih - Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 02/01/2025 *Starred Review* This cheerful picture book tells the story of how it took thousands of years for humans to realize that something was missing: a zero! It explains why it was so difficult to imagine something that actually meant nothing and documents how this emerging concept of nothingness fared in various civilizations around the world, taking several centuries to finally catch on. From the ancient Babylonians, the first to assign place values and realize that they needed a symbol showing nothing in this position, to Brahmagupta, a mathematician from India who wrote in Sanskrit to explain the significance of the numbers zero through nine, the plot follows the development of increasingly more complex math applications, from algebra (Persia) to calculating (Fibonacci) to calculus (Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz). The book mentions initial European resistance, including how a few Christian leaders actually banished zero, until the invention of the printing press helped spread the concept and led to innovations in physics, engineering, electronics, and computers. Appealing digital drawings and rich back matter (uses of zero in everyday language, definitions, a time line, references, a bibliography, and a key to historical clues found in the illustrations) help round out this unique and attractive STEM offering. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.