One Grain of Rice

By: Demi

Multicultural/International Literature

The raja in India, believed that he was wise and fair.  Every year he had the people give him most of their rice so he could store it in case there was ever a famine.  If a famine came the raja said he would share the rice with the people, but when a famine did come the raja kept all the rice for himself.  But a village girl named Rani developed a plan on how to get the rice from the raja for the people, and it worked.  Read this book to find out how Rani got the rice from the raja to feed the people, and how she taught the raja what it really means to be wise and fair.

I would read this book aloud to my students, but would not show them the grid at the end that shows exactly how much rice Rani collected from the raja.  After the reading the book to my students I would have them do the math to figure out exactly how much rice Rani received.  To start with I would have my students use only pencil and paper to solve until they got to about day ten and then I would let them use a calculator as the numbers got bigger.