The story in three lines. On Drift Day the tide lands planks in numbered patches like a roll of two dice, and a plank stays only if someone is watching that patch. Lan puts everybody on seven, and the planks that land on six and eight wash away. Dot counts all thirty-six ways, Petal piles them into a hill, they spread out along the middle, and the last plank comes on patch two, where Twobble has waited all day.

One question to ask. "Why didn't everybody just stand on seven?" Let your child explain it in their own words. If they get stuck, ask them which patches were nearly as good as seven.

One thing to do at the table. Draw the numbers two to twelve along a strip of paper. Roll two dice twenty or thirty times and put a coin, button or bean on the number for each roll. Watch the hill grow. Before you start, each of you picks one number to "watch". Who got the most beans? Was it the number you expected?

The grown-up layer. Two dice can land thirty-six ways. Seven is the most likely total because six of those ways make it. Six and eight are close behind at five ways each. The pile shape your beans make is called a distribution. Twobble's patch carries the second idea, which is just as important: an unlikely result is not an impossible one. Children (and plenty of adults) tend to think "most likely" means "will happen", and "rare" means "won't". Patch two comes up about once in every thirty-six rolls. That is rare, and it still happens.

Let your child tell the story back in their own words first. Telling it back is how a story becomes theirs.