The Map Made of Sticks
The idea: a map is a picture of where things are, so you can find your way without seeing.
Read it
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
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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
- People of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, made maps out of sticks. Most were made from the middle ribs of coconut leaves tied together, with shells tied on to show where the islands were. Source
- The sticks showed the big ocean waves, called swells, and how they curved round islands and crossed each other. A navigator studied a chart and remembered it before a voyage, and did not look at it at sea. Source
- At sea, Marshallese navigators crouched or lay down in the canoe to feel how the swells were rocking it. Source
Stretched
- In the story a boy learns to make a stick chart in one afternoon and finds an island the next day. What we simplified: Only a few people knew how to make the charts, and the knowledge was passed down in families over many years. Learning to feel the swells took a long time.
Made up
- Lan and Inkling, the spark, the buzzing word, the boy, his father and this voyage are made up.
Nobody knows
- Nobody knows when the first stick chart was made. Visitors from far away first wrote about them in 1862, but the people of the Marshall Islands had been sailing between their islands for a very long time before that. 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 P, the second of the second word under DOOR goes on your belt.
On your belt: the letter P, the second of the second word under DOOR.
Your belt lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
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.