A Grain of Rice by Helena Clare Pittman, 100 pages. Delacorte Press, 1986. $15.
Content: G
BUYING ADVISORY: EL
(K-3), EL – OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL:
AVERAGE
The peasant, Pong Lo, comes to the Emperor and asks for his daughter’s
hand in marriage. The Emperor is
insulted that a lowly peasant thinks he is good enough to marry the princess,
but before he can kill Pong Lo, the princess encourages the Emperor to employ
him at the palace. Eventually, Pong Lo’s
cleverness and positive attitude win over the people of the palace and when
Pong Lo saves the princess from an illness the Emperor offers him whatever he
wants, except for the princess. Pong Lo
asks for one grain of rice, doubled every day for one hundred days and the
Emperor could never have guessed what that would cost him.
I totally enjoyed this story and loved Pong
Lo’s determination and cleverness. The
illustrations were not very appealing, and I think they would deter kids from
reading this book. There is a long
explanation about exponential values at the end which is very interesting and
would make this book fun for a math class, but I’m unsure younger readers would
be patient enough to read that part (it is about 30 pages of the book).
C. Peterson
No comments:
Post a Comment