The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

The phrase is the turning point and premise of this amazing, simply delightful little Math book. Math? That is our son's most disliked subject. Wait, The Dot and the Line is not a Math book! It is a hilarious comedy! But is that all? It is a romance, a story of love deeply felt, pursued, capable of provoking great things in the soul. In a little math book? Is it possible? Yes, it is.Our Classic Languages-loving son reads it aloud every time this book visits us from the library. (Readers, please remind me to purchase a copy for his next birthday). He suffers with the straight, dull and unbending line when driven to the "edge" (of the paper-- the line is drawn on the edge of the page) as the "perfect by every measure" dot flirts around with the anarchist, slothful squiggle. Moved by great love, the line at first attempts to show its own grandeur by asserting its importance in art, world politics, sports. To no avail: the dot is not impressed. Then the unimaginable happens: when almost giving up, the line, using great concentration, becomes able to make angles!What follows next is what makes this little book a great book: the enthusiastic line makes more and more angles in a chaotic frenzy, until... it realizes that chaos without order leads nowhere. It stops, straightens itself again and it discovers that freedom is not a license for chaos. From then on, life changes for the line: exercising great control and virtue, it discovers a new world:For months he practiced in secret. Soon he was making squares and triangles, hexagons, parallelograms, rhomboids, polyhedrons, trapezoids, parallelepiped, decagons, tetragrams and an infinite number of other shapes so complex that he had to letter his sides and angles to keep his place. Before long he had learned to carefully control ellipses, circles and complex curves...Ah, the virtue of the discipline of Mathematics! The beauty of its exact angles and dimensions. The rhythm, art and music of what it is able to create, using exercise and order! I will refrain from spoiling it completely for the new reader, but let me quote his final "moral of the story": to the vector, the spoils. This type of humor is the best!The back jacket, after telling us that the author, among other things, runs a support group for negative numbers (one can glimpse Mr. Juster's opinion on the state of the culture in the 60s) mentions an award winning film, and I found it on You Tube. I was happy to see that that the screenplay was also written by the author but I warn you that the book is much better. This new edition has wonderful graphics and some different pictures as well.

One of the greatest books in the world! Great illustrations and easy to understand at any age.

Genius.That would be my one word review, but for those of you who want more I would call this one of the best picture books I've ever read. The story is both simple and complex, much like mathematics. It's the story of a line who's in love with a dot and the plot is filled with all the agony of unrequited love for the entire 80 pages, which will take less than 15 minutes to read. But these will be the most amusing 15 minutes of your day as you explore the theme of love through lower mathematics.

A fun little story from Master storyteller, Norton Juster. A quick and lively read that is both witty and poinient.

I was given this book as a teenager, and never forgot it. I used to ask other people if they knew about it, but few seemed to have ever heard of it. I am an artist, and in spite of the use of 'math' in the title, thought this book was about art.I missed ALL the math info and puns. (It was interesting reading the reviews of the math and science readers.) I can only tell you that the cleaver drawings tell stories that are universal. They work as well for art and life as they seem to work for math.I have now given this book to many people. Every one of them has thanked me.This is my favorite gift to give away for Valentine's day.

I first came across the title last year watching the TCM channel early one morning. Suddenly it appeared in the middle of some end of the movie features. It was absolutely delightful. I bought the book for my nephews, but could not find it on video. For almost a year now, I've been trying to get anyone's attention, including the author's, TCM and some animators. It was supposed to be shown Feb. 14 on TCM, but I didn't become aware of until Feb. 20th, and was supposed to shown again March 6th. It wasn't. However, supposedly it will be released as a short on the Doris Day "Glass Bottom Boat" DVD scheduled for April 26, 2005. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Too bad Amazon doesn't provide some other mechanism for me to note this to others than as a review.

I grew up with these books

I've been searching for this story for a long time. I saw the animation years ago and I've been in love with it since. Finally I found it on you tube, so I could enjoy it once again, but the quality isn't very good. So I started the search again, trying to find it in a DVD or direct download, but instead I found the original book. Which is incredible! Is an old book and has some minor details on the cover and what not, but who cares!, it gives it more character and some kind of beauty for the antique object.Love it!!!

If you liked the Phantom TOlbooth, you might like this. It is completely different, but imaginatively nuts. It is very short. It is as much graphical as a book of words, but it's also like an outpouring of vocabulary. It's very simple. There's a line who is in love with a dot. It's the story of their romance. Who should read it? I've no idea, but I thought it was great. It's not a kids' book, really. Teenagers, maybe. Adults, probably. If you are the right kind of person, you'll enjoy it.

Il libro è una delle innumerevoli ristampe del testo del 1963, finora mai tradotto in italiano, di cui esiste anche una versione a cartone animato che potrete recuperare sul web. La genialità di un uomo, Norton Juster, condensata in albo illustrato mirabile, da conoscere e da possedere.Da leggete anche il romanzo The Panthom Tollbooth, edito in italiano da Giunti con il titolo di Il casello magico. Una scrittura sublime, ricca e evocativa come non se ne trova più tanto spesso, specie nei romanzi per ragazzi.The dot and the line è stato comprato usato e anche se le condizioni erano abbastanza vissute l'ho apprezzato comunque.

どこから見ても完璧な丸のMiss Dotに魅せられた　Mr.Lineの恋模様が、　いとも美しく精密な幾何学図形のアプローチで　繰り広げられます。シンプルな線が　試行錯誤＆切磋琢磨して編み出す七変化のオン・パレードは圧巻。コンパクトな絵本の枠を飛び越えた勢いがあります。黒地に白で描かれた線の舞は、幾何学の姿をまとった、ラブ・レターなのです。

I chose to purchase this book because my art teacher introduced me to it and I thought I would like a copy of my own. It's funny with a serious message and explains complex ideas in a simple funny way. A fabulous little book. In fact I purchased two copies and gave one away as a christmas present

切ない、セツナイ、せつなぁ～い！こんなにもクールに、恋の切なさを表現したものはあっただろうか？惜しむらくは、この切なさを分かち合える人が今そばにいないこと・・・。