The Day Before · Sprout · ages 6-8
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Read by an AI-generated voice. The words on this page are the transcript.
The Long Stick
The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.
Warm wind blew the Green away, and the ground under their feet was somewhere else, the day before.
A garden. A canal below a steep bank. A girl carried water up in jars.
"The hot wind comes tomorrow," she said. "The plants need water tonight."
"I know a machine! I promise!" said Lan. But her words came out as a buzz. Bzzz.
You can't bring the answer. You can only bring the question.
They carried jars up the steep bank. Half spilled.
"What is heavy?" said Inkling. "The water. And it only has to go up."
The girl's brother laid a long pole over a forked post. A bucket hung on one end. Push the other end down, and the bucket goes up!
But Lan could not hold it.
Inkling pushed near the post. Hard! She pushed right at the end. Easier!
"I noticed something, I can name it," said Inkling. "The further from the post you push, the easier it is."
"Could the post stand nearer the bucket?" said Lan. "Then our side would be long."
They moved the post. Now half the push lifted the full bucket!
The girl tied a lump of mud on her end. Now the mud did the pushing.
Every row was watered by moonrise. Nobody wrote down her name.
Warm wind blew the day before away, and the grass under their feet was the Green.
The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.
Back on the Green
Tí could not lift the big paint tin lid. Lan gave him a long spoon. Pop!
Tell the story back to someone. Why was the long side easier?
Who you met
-
Lan a child of the Green Goes first; makes a friend in a minute -
Inkling a child of the Green Names what she notices
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts are true, stretched or made up — and what does nobody know?
True
- A shadoof is a long pole on a post, with a bucket at one end and a heavy weight at the other, for lifting water. The oldest known picture of one is on a cylinder seal from Mesopotamia, about four thousand two hundred years old. Source
- Shadoofs are still used in some places today. A painting in a tomb in Egypt from about 1250 BCE shows one too. Source
- A stick on a post balances when the weight times its distance on one side equals the push times its distance on the other. Twelve, one step away, balances six, two steps away. Twice as far, half the push.
Stretched
- In the story the bucket hangs on the short end of the pole. What we simplified: Real shadoofs usually hang the bucket on the long end and put a heavy lump of mud or stone on the short end, so the weight does the lifting and the bucket can rise higher. We kept the bucket on the short end to show the long stick most simply.
Made up
- Lan and Inkling, the spark, the buzzing words, the girl, her brother and her grandmother are made up. So is the hot wind that was coming tomorrow.
Nobody knows
- Nobody knows who made the first shadoof, or where. The oldest picture of one is on a seal; the seal does not say who thought of it. Source