Set during the last year of World War I, 1918, in Baltimore, Maryland. Author Black has created the novel out of his grandmother's memories of growing up there. In an environment of war hysteria, the great influenza pandemic, and the racial divides of 1918 Baltimore, seventh grader, Eleanor Blizzard, attempts to make friends and to do what she knows to be right. Before the Great War was really over, an erroneous French report of armistice spread worldwide over the wire services. Historically accurate, Liberty Girl captures the glorious moment and its jubilation that the peace announcement brought. Too, the novel explores the empty feeling in the hearts and minds of the neighborhood as the mistake came to light. The Spanish influenza epidemic also involves the characters in varying degrees of difficulty.

Liberty Girl

Robert Black

Children's Books

Royal Fireworks Publishing

Night of the Frightening Fractions

Royal Fireworks Press

Tiny changes in a system dramatically affecting the course of much larger events—what we know of as “the Butterfly Effect”—was demonstrated in 1960 by a mathematician and meteorologist named Edward Lorenz. It was an accidental discovery, but like the concept itself, it led to something much larger—something that has been called one of the twentieth century’s great revolutions in the physical sciences: chaos theory.

Edward Lorenz and the Chaotic Butterflies

A Mathical Book Prize Honor Book! David Blackwell’s interest in math was sparked in a high school geometry class, and he spent the rest of his life pursuing solutions to mathematical problems, but not just in geometry. Blackwell’s career is particularly interesting because he worked in an array of subjects, instead of delving deeply into a single one, as is more typical of eminent mathematicians. He would read the work of others and then investigate different cases or applications of theorems that he thought hadn’t been explored thoroughly enough. As a result, his influence stretched across a wide range of subjects, although it all centered on the basic concepts of mathematical and statistical decision-making. Much of Blackwell’s work stemmed from his study of duels. If two people are given guns with one bullet in them and are told to stand apart from each other—Old West style—draw, and fire, is there any way to tell who would emerge as the winner? Blackwell thought it was possible, and he worked on the problem until he had an answer as to what the outcome was likely to be, given a variety of conditions. That sort of thinking infused all of his work, and today he is regarded as a brilliant mathematician whose contributions helped to lay the foundation for new fields such as information theory. That he was an African-American working in the years before and during the Civil Rights Movement makes his accomplishments that much more remarkable. There’s a “Doing the Math” section at the end of the book so that readers can try working out the math themselves!

David Blackwell and the Deadliest Duel

The Eyes of the Enemy

Things were bad enough when seventh grader Lennie Miller had to leave her home and her friends and move with her parents to the little town of Bailey, Indiana.  But then she discovered that Bailey has a secret--a Mystical Realm few people can see, full of ghosts, wizards and monsters.  And worst of all, these creatures have decided that she is their "Pattern Finder," the person they all turn to for help with their math problems!Soon Lennie and her new friend Gil are challenged to figure out who would win a race between a vampire and a werewolf, how fast gremlins can reproduce, and how much cargo a crew of aliens can carry in their flying saucer! But just as it looks like she'll be a Pattern Finder for life, Lennie discovers a potential way out. Can she find the magical veil her ancestor stole and escape her destiny?Author Robert Black mixes his narrative with a series of pre-algebra level math puzzles in what he calls "Mathematical Fiction." He says: I wanted to use storytelling as a way of communicating math concepts. Just as a good historical novel can introduce readers to different times and places, I'm introducing readers to the ways of looking at the world through numbers. When Lennie Miller and her friends try to solve a math problem, the reader is right there with them."The aim of the novel is to present math concepts in a memorable and entertaining way, taking the reader through the full experience of mathematical discovery. The combination reflects Black's own experience, as both a degreed engineer and a writer.  "Night of the Paranormal Patterns is not only a rousing fantasy adventure; it also encourages young people to look at solving math problems in a new way, as each conundrum originates organically from the monsters' daily lives. Highly recommended, especially for public and school library YA collections." --Children's Bookwatch

Night of the Paranormal Patterns

Literature & Fiction

Most people have never heard of Benoit Mandelbrot, but it’s hard to imagine anyone who hasn’t seen the effects of his work. In fact, the movie and gaming industries and even smartphones would be very different today if not for Mandelbrot, a Polish Jew who escaped Nazism to become one of the most important mathematicians of the twentieth century.\nMandelbrot had a talent for envisioning geometric solutions to mathematical problems, but for the first part of his career, he seemed to his colleagues to be disorganized and unfocused. However, although Mandelbrot had been investigating topics in an array of different fields, he had begun seeing the same geometric functions and characteristics in all of them, from coastlines to financial trends to telephone signals to galaxies. His ability to find connections among such seemingly unrelated subjects led him to the discovery of fractal geometry. His work at IBM with the first computers enabled him to explore and expand upon his ideas, opening up an amazing new mathematical realm. Others took what he did and applied it to new areas, such as economics, telecommunications, medicine, biology, and even art, and his work was the foundation for the development of smartphone antennas, movie animation magic, and much more.\nWe have always lived in a fractal world, but Mandelbrot is the one who showed it to us.\nThis book includes a variety of color images that illustrate fractal figures and patterns to enhance the explanations and for greater visual enjoyment of the narrative. There’s also a “Doing the Math” section at the end of the book so that readers can try working out the math themselves!

Benoit Mandelbrot: Reshaping the World

Florence Nightingale: The Lady with the Diagrams

Night of the Paranormal Patterns Dyslexia Pack, Part 1: The Redcoat Ghosts

Night of the Paranormal Patterns Dyslexia Pack, Part 2: Who Would Win?

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Books by Robert Black