Review Detail

The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice

Kids Nonfiction 354

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things

March 06, 2025 (Updated: June 24, 2026)

Overall rating

4.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

Learning Value

4.0

Marjorie Rice didn't go to college to study math, and wasn't in any way a professional, yet she solved a geometrical puzzle that baffled people in the field. While squares, triangles, and even hexagons can fit together, it's very difficult to find a five sided shape that will create an interlocking pattern. People have studied this for years, and found a few shapes that will work, but Marjorie tried to look for more. Entranced by nature and shapes as a child, this continued as she grew up, and she read all that she could about geometry and shapes. She was entranced by an article in Scientific American detailing a shape that worked, and she decided to try to find others. She found a previously unknown tessellating shape, the tenth that people had figured out. She sent her work to Martin Gardner at the magazine, who consulted Doris Schattschneider. Marjorie found three different shapes that would tessellate, and was honored for her work in tiling pentagons in 1995.

Good Points

Ordinary people who chase their passions with amazing results are always fun to read about, and the pictures of Price's ordinary life, washing clothes and taking care of her home and children, are a great contrast to the intricate patterns that she helped create. I can't imagine the mathematical acuity necessary to figure out these problems; it's just too bad that Price, born in 1923, didn't have opportunities for more formal education; who knows what else she might have figured out.

The tessellations in this book are exquisite, and there are plenty of different examples, from nature to history. I can't say that I fully understood the importance of finding these new five sided shapes, or the work involved, but they are very interesting.

Add The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice to a list of picture book biographies about women mathematicians that shapes up to include Reid and Jaleel's Maryam's Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, Mosca and Rieley's The Girl With A Mind For Math: The Story of Raye Montague, Becker and Rust's Emmy Noether: The Most Important Mathematician You've Never Heard Of, and Bardoe and McClintock's Nothing Stopped Sophie: The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain.