One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale

On this particular trip, I happened upon a very fine book, One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale by Demi. The story is of a Raja who believed himself to be wise and fair, but became selfish when a famine came. He refused to share his stores of the village rice. When the Raja offered a village girl a reward for a good deed, she suggested one grain of rice, doubled every day for thirty days. The Raja believed the reward to be modest and agreed to the terms. On the first day, the girl was given one grain of rice. On the second, two grains. The next day, she received four grains of rice. A few days later, she received over a thousand grains. By the end of the 30 days, the girl had received a total of one billion grains of rice -- enough for the whole village, and for the Raja too! The last page of the book has a chart to show how many grains the girl received on each day.

Math Learning Fun Through Literature