Beast Academy is a set of grade three math textbooks and practice books structured as comic books about monsters. The books are “aligned to the common core state standards for grade three,” if that matters to you. What’s more significant is that they’re actually really good math textbooks that introduce their subjects in a clear and easy-to-follow fashion, carefully linking each concept to the last; and the exercises are lively, fun, and built around stories that dovetail smoothly into puzzles, games, and other ways of putting the knowledge into practice. The monsters are great, too — wonderful illustrations from Erich Owen, whose work you may recognize from the graphic novel adaptation of my story I, Robot.
