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 Map Made of Sticks
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.
Sand. Palm trees. The sea all round. A boy was getting a canoe ready.
"Tomorrow we sail to the next island," he said. "I have to say when it is near."
"I know what that means! You need a..." said Lan. Bzzz.
You can't bring the answer. You can only bring the question.
The boy pointed. "It's that way." Out at sea, he pointed a different way.
He drew the waves in the wet sand. The sea washed them away.
"What stays the same out there?" said Inkling. "The big waves. Near an island, they bend."
"Could the waves be made of sticks?" said Lan. "Sticks stay."
His father gave him thin sticks and two shells. Straight sticks for the big waves. Bent sticks round the island. A shell for home and a shell for the island.
"Where do the bent sticks cross?" said Lan.
The boy tied a tiny shell there. "If the canoe rocks two ways at once, the island is near!"
At sea, the boy lay down and felt the canoe rock two ways at once. "Near!" he said. Then palm trees came up!
Warm wind blew the day before away, and the grass under their feet was the Green.
Under DOOR, after O, was a new letter. P.
The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.
Back on the Green
Lan made a stick map of the Green. Inkling found the bench with her eyes shut!
Tell the story back to someone. Why did the sticks work?
Who you met
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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