The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice: How to Discover a Shape

Gr 1-4–Shapes that repeat and fit without gaps or overlaps are a seemingly simple jigsaw puzzle problem that hide an even bigger math problem. Not all shapes tessellate, fitting together by repetition, and the puzzle of having a pentagon tessellate has been a conundrum since ancient times. The story approaches the explanation of this complex math problem through a biography of housewife Marjorie Rice and her fascination with shapes. The beautifully illustrated book explains the history of tessellations: shapes that easily tessellate include triangles, four-sided shapes and some six-sided shapes. The book soon focuses on Rice’s history of being discouraged from studying mathematics, becoming a housewife but being encouraged to read and imagine. Simultaneously, using diagrams of pentagons in different shapes, the book explains visually the complexity of finding pentagons that tessellate. Rice, inspired by her son’s Scientific American, discovers the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th pentagon that tessellate.