The Valley of Shining Stones

For grown-ups

A gentle retelling from the Thousand and One Nights: your child finds a roc's egg and signals the basket-makers for a way up.

What your child practises

• Noticing what tells you that people have been somewhere
• Sending a message someone far away can see or hear
• Agreeing fairly when something belongs to someone else
• Knowing that real birds once laid enormous eggs

Listen for

Your child explaining why the crew left the shining stones in the valley.

Your part

• Use an Ask when your child wants to talk; skip it when the story is carrying them along
• The roc, its egg and the shining valley come from the tale; our basket-makers and their lift are new
• Wild birds are watched from far away, never handled; the elephant bird and its huge egg were real

Take it off the screen

Tap a rhythm on a table from another room. Can someone at home answer it with the same rhythm?

Where the facts come from

• Project Gutenberg: Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights Entertainments
• Museums Victoria: An elephant bird's egg
• National Geographic Education: Monsoon

Sinbad's Shipmate

Book 2 in this series

• Book 1: The Island That Sneezed
• Book 2: The Valley of Shining Stones (this book)
• Book 3: The Giant and the Little Voices

This sea chart can carry your child's name into Sinbad's adventures. A red line already runs to a little island shaped like a whale. At the chart's edge, a feather is drawn beside an oar. They are the same length. Their Pet blows on the wind rose in the corner. Whoosh! Salt wind lifts the corners of the chart.

The edge of the table becomes a ship's rail. This is Basra, long, long ago. Sinbad, a merchant sailor from Baghdad, waves from his ship. "Shipmate!" he calls. "I hoped you would come." He holds up the logbook. "New pages, for new wonders."

"The wind has turned with the season," says Sinbad. "Our wind is here." Everyone puts a hand on the mast, and your child's name does too. "Wind, take us," says the crew together, "and bring us home." The big sail fills, and the ship slides out to the open sea.

At sunset, everyone sits on deck with dates and flatbread. Bashir counts the bread. Then he counts it again. Yusuf is carving a little wooden bird. Its legs are very, very long. "Birds don't have legs that long," says Bashir. "This one does," says Yusuf, and keeps carving.

In the morning they land on a grassy island. In the middle stands something strange: a smooth white dome, as big as a house. "A building?" says Bashir. "Then where is the door?" Sinbad looks up at its smooth white curve. "No door that I can see."

Your child's name walks all the way round with Sinbad and their Pet. It is smooth, and white, and very tall. Fifty steps round. No door. No window. Not even a crack. "Who builds a house with no way in?" says your child's name.

Suddenly the sun goes out. A huge shadow slides over the grass. High in the sky, an enormous bird is gliding down. Its wings stretch across the whole sky! "A roc," says Sinbad softly. "That's no dome. It's her egg!" In our world: elephant birds once lived in Madagascar. They laid enormous eggs, much bigger than a hen's egg.

"Quietly now," says Sinbad. "We leave her egg in peace." He leads everyone down a sheltered path. Behind them the roc lands, and her great wings make a gust. Far up the path, loose stones slide down and cover it. Nobody is near. Nobody is hurt. But the way back up is gone.