Stack of Books – Through the Mathemalchemy Looking Glass

Stack of Books Story

Through the Mathemalchemy Looking Glass

Stack-of-Books is a rock formation at the outskirts of the park. It looks so remarkably like a stack of books that the name was inescapable. It has been a long tradition to spruce up the colors on the formation on a regular basis, so that it continues to look like a stack of gigantic real books. This year, the Young Squirrel Climbing Association organized a special campaign to get the formation all spic-and-span in time for the annual Squirrel Picnic; local business owners provided funding for the materials, and YSCA volunteers carried out all the work. It took a lot of climbs, made more precarious because they had paints, brushes and other painting paraphernalia strapped to their backs. Head librarian Tasos had been darkly forecasting that the YSCA’s ambitious renovation campaign would never be ready in time, but they did pull it off! The Stack looks absolutely dashing, and very life-like. The youngsters went so far as to fashion make-believe bookmarks, recycling some of their scaffolding materials, and even adding some portraits related to the titles marked on the spines, after extensive research in the library, under the watchful eye of Tasos.


Funny that the squirrels think of Stack-of-Books as a rock formation. They are real books, of course, bearing witness to the roots of mathematics in the far past, to the universality of mathematical thinking and to wide-spread appreciation for the beauty of mathematics. It is entirely fitting that our little girl is perched right there, playing her horn, oblivious of all the knowledge supporting her …”

— The Mathematician

Read more about the Stack of Books

2 thoughts on “Stack of Books – Through the Mathemalchemy Looking Glass

Leave a Reply