Giovanni Colon
Blog Post 3
The King's Chessboard by David Birch

Like One Grain of Rice,  The King's Chessboard also deals with a not so wise monarch and a very wise protagonist. In fact, the protagonist is only referred to as the wise man. The wise man performs some service to the king of Deccan in India and the king wishes to reward him. The wise man refuses but the king insists and after seeing the chessboard, the wise man comes up with an idea: he asks the king for a grain of rice for each square on the chessboard; however, each day the grains double each day. Basically the wise man is asking the king for an exponential of grains of rice. The king doesn't see this and only assumes that the wise man wants 64 grains of rice so after some thought and consultation with the queen he agrees to the deal. Like the girl in One Grain of Rice, the wise man ends up having a multitude of food and the king's stores are empty.

As I said before the book exposes the idea of exponential growth using grains of rice. The growth pattern is 2^n for n greater or equal to zero just like the pattern in One Grain of Rice. The book truly shows children the power of doubling.

Literature is an exceptional way to teach simple things in mathematics since children gravitate to illustrations and tales of kings and wise men much quicker than to formula sheets and workbooks full of problems.