Children’s author David Schwartz uses the tongue of toy salamander to demonstrate proportion during a presentation at the Yankton Middle School auditorium Tuesday night.

Posted: Tuesday, April 23, 2013 10:44 pm

After months of preparation, and responding to a local drive that collected 1 million soda pop tabs, renowned children’s author David Schwartz was in Yankton Tuesday speaking to many of the schools in town.

Because many of Schwartz’s books are based on the number 1 million, officials from the Yankton Reading Council, a group of school teachers and administrators, decided they would collect a million soda pop tabs by the time he came to Yankton. Officials will donate the money collected from the pop tabs, around $400, to the Ronald McDonald House in Sioux Falls.

“More so then the money, the community effort is so meaningful,” said Kevin Miles, executive director of the Ronald McDonald Houses in South Dakota. “For families to step up and collect so many pop tabs means a lot to us.”

Schwartz had a public speaking engagement Tuesday night at Yankton Middle School. His speech, titled “Anything Can Happen (Even Math) When Children Wonder About What They Read,” dealt with how teachers and parents can utilize the math woven into his many books.

“I loved wondering about numbers as a kid,” Schwartz said. “When I would ride my bike, I would always start wondering how long it would take me to ride across the earth, or to other places.”

One of Schwartz’s most popular book, “How Much Is A Million,” deals with making the number 1 million concrete for students and young children to understand.

“I loved the idea of being able to see 1 million of something in one place,” he said. “I also wrote similar books on measuring 1 million and wrote about how long it would take someone to count up to a million.”

Schwartz gave the advice to parents and teachers that they can use graphs in a lot of his books, which help go deeper into the topics found in his books.

“There are a lot of questions that can be asked from the books I have published,” he said. “You can have kids create their own questions, then answer them.”

Schwartz added that parents and teachers need to encourage their children and students to read.

“Literature is such a big gateway to other subjects, including math,” he said. “The learning process is so powerful, and parents and teachers need to engage their kids and students in that process.”

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