About the Holiday

National Math Storytelling Day was established in 2009 by Maria Droujkova, founder of The Natural Math Community at Naturalmath.com, and her daughter to encourage people to share the joys of math with children through stories and games. Having fun with math is one of the best ways to get kids excited about learning and working with this most important subject. Celebrate today with math stories that involve patterns, spatial relations, quantities, logic, puzzles, and numbers. You can even sing math songs and tell math jokes! You’ll find lots of resources for Math Storytelling Day and every day on the Natural Math website. Today’s book comes from Charlesbridge, who early on embraced the power of picture books to get children involved with math in everyday life.

Thank you to Charlesbridge for sending me a copy of this book for review!

Sisters All the Time (Steamworks)

Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition)

By Angela Quezada Padron

For Mari Saturday was the best day of the week because her half-sister Luz came over. “They laughed and played all day [and] giggled and acted silly all night.” But when Sunday came and Luz had to leave, Mari felt sad. She never seemed to have enough time with her big sister. On this Sunday, just five minutes before Luz’s mom was scheduled to pick Luz up, she called to say she’d be two hours late. Excited to have extra time together, Mari and Luz planned out which activities they wanted to do. Mari wanted to do all of them, but Luz knew they didn’t have time for that.

They decided to write down all of their favorite activities and estimate how long each took. First up, they wanted to “try to beat [their] record for the longest domino trail ever.” This would take about 40 minutes to set up . . . “and about 5 minutes to watch them all topple.” They had one hour and 45 minutes left to fill. With the trail built and a new world record accomplished, it was time to have a fashion show. Part way through their preps (including making up Papi and doing his hair), pizza arrived. After lunch, they only had 30 minutes left, so they decided to play indoor Olympics.

Luz and Mari had just gotten started when Papi reminded them that their lunch dishes needed cleaning. Then during their trampoline contest, he told them they needed to pick up the dominoes and hang up the fashion show clothes. All of these ate into the time the girls had left. With only five minutes before Luz’s mom was expected, they jumped into a sock race, but “Ding Dong!” time was up. Mari pleaded for more time. She thought that sisters should not “live together SOME of the time,” but ALL the time. Luz took her little sister’s hand and told her, “No matter where I am, you’ll always be my hermanita, 365 days a year.” Throughout the week, the sisters called and planned their “time to smile together, laugh together, and love together.”

Back matter includes an Author’s Note about her own half siblings and a spread titled Picking Up STEAM with English time-related words to know, Spanish words that appear in the story, concepts of time management, basic facts about time, hours from 1:00 to 12:00 shown on an analog and digital clock, and ideas for readers to play with and explore time on their own.

Angela Quezada Padron’s warmhearted story of half sisters who love spending time together provides a perfect frame for children learning about time management and tempering expectations of how much can be accomplished in measured amounts of time. The sisters’ enthusiasm and imagination will captivate readers, and the time spans for each activity on their list are realistic and may prompt kids to time themselves doing each one. Quezada Padron’s inclusion of clean-up time will be appreciated by parents and caregivers and is a good reminder about responsibility for children as well. Her vibrant, action-packed illustrations portray the close relationship between the sisters and eye-catching perspectives on the girls’ activities. There are plenty of scenes to make kids giggle too as they minutes tick down on a fun day.

Education wrapped in engaging fun, Sisters All the Time (Steamworks) and offer an affectionate family story in which concepts of time unfold as naturally as they do at home, in a classroom, or other settings. The book will spark recognition of how time passes and a beginning to better time management of busy days and is a top pick for all libraries, classrooms, and home collections.

Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition)

Mari y Luz son un tipo de hermanas especial: ¡medias hermanas! Comparten el mismo papá, pero tienen mamás distintas, por lo que solo pasan los fines de semana juntas. Cuando la mamá de Luz se retrasa un día, las chicas deciden aprovechar su tiempo adicional al máximo, así que planifican sus actividades, estiman cuánto tiempo les llevará cada una y se lanzan a hacerlas. Pero el tiempo se les acaba demasiado rápido, y Mari se siente triste. Luz le recuerda que son hermanas TODO el tiempo, aunque solo puedan estar juntas una parte del tiempo.

Ages 4 – 7

Charlesbridge, 2026 | ISBN 978-1623546779

About the Author

Angela Quezada Padron is a Latina author-illustrator who spent childhood days writing stories and doodling on garage walls of her New Jersey home while enjoying summers visiting family in the Dominican Republic. She writes fiction and nonfiction picture books and novels, and she creates colorful, textured illustrations with diverse characters & heartwarming scenes. Angela won first place in the Portfolio Showcase at the 2023 Florida SCBWI Conference and was chosen as a semi-finalist for the SCBWI Tomie dePaola Award in 2014. Visit her at angelapadron.com.

Math Storytelling Day Activity

Sisters All the Time Activity Page

Kids can have eye-opening fun keeping track of their favorite activities, chores, mealtimes, or other events of the day with this Time and El tiempo y la hora pages from Charlesbridge!