The story in three lines. Lan and Inkling fold Kami into a cup and step into a temple yard in Kuwana in 1797, where a monk folds cranes that stay joined. Sayo wants two cranes holding wings for her grandmother; Lan nearly cuts the sheet in two before Kami stops her. Mark reads the drawing (dashes fold, a solid line cuts, and the cut stops short), Cornelia, Crinkle and Presso fold both squares into the same base, Inkling reads the last marks herself, and the two cranes hold wings.

One question to ask. "What did both cranes start as?" The answer the story wants is the base: the same in-between shape that every crane, and many other models, grow from. If your child says "a square", that is right too, and you can ask what came next.

One thing to do at the table. You need a sheet of paper twice as long as it is wide (fold a sheet of printer paper in half and cut along the fold, then use one half). Draw a line across the middle that stops a finger-width short of one edge. Cut only along the line. Now you have two squares that hold hands. Fold each one corner to corner, twice, and count the layers: two, then four. The full crane is on CreaseForge if your family wants to go further.

The grown-up layer. The oldest known book of folding for fun, Hiden Senbazuru Orikata, was printed in Kyoto in 1797. It is a book of joined cranes made by cutting a sheet part-way. Most historians credit a monk in Kuwana known as Rokoan, though one museum copy names someone else, which is a good thing to tell a child: sources do not always agree. The idea in the story is that a model has a base. Folders learn a few bases, and each one opens onto many models.

Let your child tell the story back in their own words first.