The Rabbit Problem

The Rabbit Problem by Emily Gravett, Simon and Schuster Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4424-1255-2
from the Simon and Schuester website: "In Gravett's gifted hands, an old math problem springs to life--and more life and more life! Medieval mathematician Fibonacci's "rabbit problem," in which bunnies breed at a specified rate, provides the structure of this glorious faux--wall calendar that watches a rabbit community from January to December...Readers needn't care about the math of Fibonacci Numbers to love the hilarious, jam-packed visual details, many of which are playfully metatextual...Endless fun to pore over for kids and math-minded or geeky adults.
-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
(Publisher's Weekly also gave this book a starred review).
Personally, I think they made up the word "metatextual". However, it might be a good word to describe this book: opened up, it looks like a wall calendar, but then it has other things attached to the calendar (one month a newspaper, another month a cookbook, then a thermometer, a birth announcement, etc).
While this would be a book a child might pore over for hours, it probably wouldn't make a good read-aloud. The format of the book is very clever and innovative, but involves too much on one page for a whole group of children to look at.
And it is a wonderful way to look at a math problem (Fibonacci's number sequence) by sneaking it into a book about rabbits!