The Paper Door · ages 6-8

The Square in Madras

The idea: a fold is a ruler — folding in half finds the middle without measuring.

Lan and Inkling step out of a paper door into a garden in Madras in 1893. Inkling holds Kami. A girl, Meena, kneels by a garden bed with eight marigold seedlings and a long paper strip, and a man folds paper at a desk on the verandah.

Read it

Sprout 273 words Grower 822 words · 8 chapters Reader 3608 words · 11 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

Kami Paper becomes a new shape with every fold, and it only cuts where it is told from CreaseTots
Lan a child of the Green Goes first; makes a friend in a minute
Mark The lines tell you what to do — dashes fold, solid lines cut from CreasePals
Cornelia Bring one corner to meet the other corner, exactly from CreaseTots
Crinkle Smooth a crooked fold out and try again; the crease remembers from CreaseTots
Presso Hold the paper still and press the fold flat so it stays from CreaseTots
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 of this story are true, stretched or made up?

True

T. Sundara Row's book Geometric Exercises in Paper Folding was printed in Madras in 1893. It showed how to fold shapes and find lines and middles without a ruler or a compass. Source
Row wrote that his idea came from a kindergarten paper-folding gift, from the same kindergarten folding that Fröbel's garden used. Source
A famous German mathematician, Felix Klein, wrote about the book in 1895, and it was later printed in America too. Source
Folding a strip in half three times makes eight layers. Opened out, it has seven creases and eight equal parts.

Stretched

The man folding on the verandah in our story never says his name. What we simplified: We kept the real author in the background so the children and the cast solve the problem themselves; nobody knows where Row sat to fold.
In our story the folding drawing on the desk shows a square folded edge to edge to find its middle. What we simplified: That is one of the first exercises in Row's book, but we drew our own simple version, not his page.

Made up

Meena, her grandmother, her uncle and the paper door are made up. Kami, Mark, Cornelia, Presso and Crinkle are our own characters.

Tell it back

Tell the story in your own words: who was there, what went wrong, and what they found out. Then a paper strip creased into eight equal parts 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.