Three friends deal with a difficult dilemma: dividing a delicious dessert.
Having helped youngsters learn to read an analogue clock and pick up the basics of geometry, Wise and Lynch return to the farm, where Chicken, Goat, and Sheep are attempting to share a hexagonal cake that looks scrumptious, if a bit improbable (hexagonal baking pans?). Chicken is eager to eat, but Goat’s impetuous initial attempts at cutting the cake result in unequal portions. Thankfully, Sheep turns to the chalkboard before the dessert is destroyed. Colorful drawings illustrate the proper division as Sheep demonstrates that two-sixths is the same as one-third—just as Farmer Ed arrives with a triangular apple pie to split among them (a formidable problem, not solved here). The final pages dispense with the jokes and baked goods and simply explain equivalent fractions and simplified fractions, providing a page of more challenging practice examples (without answers) for each concept. Readers who can stomach the outrageously antique Dad jokes will find this a tasty treat. Comiclike illustrations, with panels and speech bubbles, are as zany as those in the earlier books, and the concepts are once more clearly explained, though suitably more advanced. Eye-catching endpapers featuring yummy desserts would make perfect pastry-shop wallpaper.
Math made funny and engaging.
(Picture book. 8-10)