A Grain of Rice

I used this book for years when teaching English to non-native speakers. Teenagers to adults, all loved this sweet love story. It also gave them insight into Chinese culture of the past. Best of all was the mathematical trick the main character played on the Emperor! My students tried in vain to calculate the grains of rice and we all had a good laugh!! Such a great story!! If you haven’t read it, you’re definitely missing out!!

My son ( 9 year old)homeschooled and I enjoyed this book! It teaches him how multiplication works. He reads this book multiple times and he never gets tired using multiplication! I definitely recommend this book! I used this for my homeschooling.

This book was fun! It had a moral, but was not preachy. And the worlds of math and literature combined!Our son was excited to read the book and learn about the power of doubling!Such a good book we gifted it several times already. Too often books only focusing on reading. The math in this story is powerful and helps kids learn about saving!

What i like about it was the princess wouldnt eat anything else other then pong lo's food. It was easy to read. It kept my attention for most of it.Randall 10 years old.

I thought it was a very good book. It only took me 20 minutes . Why i like it is because it is a short and simple book . I also like that it is about a clever young man.My favorite part of the book is when the emperor of china tells Pong Lo he can ask for anything. I loved Pong Lo's clever response.

One of our family favorites! A poor, but clever young man wins the heart of a princess, outsmarts the Emperor and wins the respect of all. We read it over and over. It also highlights an often overlooked math multiplication principle as the clever means the poor man is lifted from his humble station to supremacy.

The illustrations are sweet and engaging.This is a story of how a peasant wins the Chinese emperor's daughter's hand in marriage through his cleverness, kindness, and the power of compounding.

Interesting way to teach the value of compound interest and how little effort it takes to master this concept and reap the benefits. My 4-year-old grandson is reading it now and quite intrigued; he's spending a lot more time counting his "piggy money". Appropriate for any age! Good read!

Lovely story, well told. My children at school enjoyed working out the next number of rice grains in the sequence. Great for mathematical problem solving and an interesting story in its own right.

This is a beautifully crafted story and the pencil drawings are sensitively drawn and very charming. Helena Clare Pittman has created an intelligent and clever story based on China's ancient royal court, and how a poor but very clever and good young man wins both the Emperor's favor and his daughter's heart and, eventually, hand. Highly recommended!

A great book to use with my students.