The Paper Door · Sprout · ages 6-8
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Read by an AI-generated voice. The words on this page are the transcript.
The Hidden Face
The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.
It led Lan and Inkling to the print shop. Kami the paper square lay on the table.
They folded Kami into a cup. The last crease went flat, and the paper opened like a door.
They were in a cold stone room, long ago. A girl called Rosa sat by a window.
"I made three pictures," said Rosa. "A moon, a fish and a star. But a card has two sides."
A young man was folding long paper strips. Each strip had ten triangles drawn on it.
"I'll fold them all!" said Lan. Fold, fold, fold, on every line. It made a stiff stick.
"Read the drawing before your hands move," said Mark. "Only some lines are dashed."
"Corner to corner," said Cornelia. Three triangles, fold. Three more, fold. A hexagon!
One triangle stuck out. Inkling folded it to the front. It would not stick.
"Smooth it out and try again," said Crinkle. "The crease remembers." This time it went behind.
"Now press it flat," said Presso. A dab of glue. Hold it still.
"Every fold makes me something new," said Kami. Pinch, push, open. A hidden face!
Rosa drew the moon and the fish. She hid the star inside.
They unfolded the paper flat, and the door closed behind them.
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 card with a secret inside. She folded it the right way first.
Tell the story back to someone. Where was the star hiding?
Who you met
-
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
- In 1939 Arthur Stone, a student from England at Princeton University, found the first flexagon. His new American paper did not fit his English binder, so he cut the ends off and started folding the strips. Source
- Three of his friends, Bryant Tuckerman, Richard Feynman and John Tukey, joined him. They called themselves the Flexagon Committee. Source
- Martin Gardner wrote about flexagons in Scientific American in December 1956. People liked it so much that it started his long-running column of mathematical games. Source
- The three-face flexagon is made from nine triangles in a strip, plus one more to glue. Nine triangles have eighteen sides, and they show as three faces of six triangles each.
Stretched
- The young man folding strips in our story never says his name. What we simplified: We kept the real Arthur Stone in the background so the children and the cast solve the problem themselves; nobody knows exactly where he sat to fold.
- In our story his notebook shows the folding drawing for the strip. What we simplified: We drew our own simple folding drawing; we do not know what his own notes looked like.
Made up
- Rosa, her little brother and the paper door are made up. Kami, Mark, Cornelia, Presso and Crinkle are our own characters.