The Day Before · ages 6-8

The Notched Bone

The idea: one mark for one thing keeps a count your head cannot hold.

Read it

Sprout 282 words Grower 888 words · 9 chapters Reader 4008 words · 9 chapters

One story, three ways: Sprout for a new reader, Grower in short chapters, Reader as a full chapter book. Same plot, same ending.

Who is in this book

Inkling a child of the Green Names what she notices
Lan a child of the Green Goes first; makes a friend in a minute

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

The Ishango bone was found at an old fishing settlement where Lake Edward runs into the Semliki River, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is about twenty thousand years old, and it has groups of notches cut along it in three rows. Source
An even older notched bone, the Lebombo bone, comes from a cave in the Lebombo Mountains between South Africa and Eswatini. It is about forty-two thousand years old. Source
A tally keeps a count by making one mark for each thing, and the marks are often put in groups so they are easier to read. Source

Stretched

In the story the girl's fish traps are woven baskets, and the notched bone is made in one afternoon to count them. What we simplified: The people at Ishango fished and gathered food, but nobody knows whether they used basket traps. Twenty thousand years is a long time, and how dates this old are worked out is still argued about.

Made up

Lan and Inkling, the spark, the buzzing word, the girl, her grandmother and the twelve traps are made up.

Nobody knows

Nobody knows what the notches on the Ishango bone were for. Some people think they were a count, some think a calendar of the moon, and some think they were cut to make the bone easier to hold. Source

Tell it back

Tell the story in your own words: who was there, what went wrong, and what they found out. Then the letter O, the first of a second word under DOOR goes on your belt.

Ring the hammer for someone

Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.

Across the Table → For the grown-up: the story in three lines, one question to ask, and one thing to do together.