The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice

Starred review from January 1, 2025
Grades 2-5 *Starred Review* A bright child in the 1930s, Marjorie loved nature and looked for patterns in the natural world. By her fifth year, she had taught herself to read, and when she started school, she was placed in second grade. As she grew up, she became fascinated by geometric shapes with three, four, or six straight sides. Groups of these identical polygons could fit together to create a repeating pattern (tessellation) on a floor, a wall, or a piece of paper. But only a few five-sided shapes could be combined to create such patterns. Twentieth-century mathematicians struggled to discover more, with limited success. Meanwhile, Marjorie grew up, married, and raised five children. In her spare time, she, too, searched for five-sided figures that tessellate, and she succeeded several times. Her discoveries brought attention to Rice as an amateur researcher making significant contributions to geometry. Writing with a storyteller's flair, Alznauer captures her audience's attention with colorful phrases and interesting facts. The back matter, which advises kids on how to create polygons and tessellations, is lively and engaging as well. Bron's expressive digital illustrations depict Rice at different ages, while helping readers understand the geometric challenges that fascinated her. A memorable picture-book biography featuring a notable amateur mathematician.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2025
The story of an amateur mathematician who joined professional ones in a long quest to solve a geometric puzzle. A brainy, hands-on child who saw patterns all around her, Marjorie Rice (nee Jeuck, 1923-2017) grew up fascinated by both geometry and art. As an adult, she read one of her son's science magazines and learned that while all three- and four-sided geometric figures could be tessellated (or tiled together) endlessly without gaps, the same could be said of only a scant handful of pentagons. Notwithstanding her lack of formal training, Marjorie attempted to find other pentagons and succeeded, by inventing a systematic method that the author describes in detail. Alznauer wisely suggests that, worthy as her discovery was, even more laudable was the fact that she was motivated not by profit or prestige but, like all true "amateurs," by love for the challenge and the beauty of the results. Bron reflects the latter in illustrations that incorporate most (or perhaps all) of the 15 possible tessellating pentagons into floors and backgrounds, into floral displays painted by Rice herself, and into views of her animated, slightly disheveled figure busily engaged in the daily business of running a household while thinking, envisioning, and sketching out ideas. Alznauer's cogent, absorbing text captures Marjorie's excitement and offers easily understood explanations of the math involved. Inspiration and validation for amateurs of all sorts, beautifully presented. (author's note, bibliography, more information on shapes)(Picture-book biography. 7-9)

COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.