“Why aren’t there any children playing outdoors?” Nico asked Pauly as the two dolls walked up to The Writer’s house to visit their friends.
“I think it has something to do with why the sky is so yellow,” Pauly replied, waving his little vinyl hands at the sky. The sky was very gloomy and had a yellowish cast to it. “This happened last summer, too,” he explained. “I noticed it when we got home from our trip to the beach.”
Pippa, who had been waiting for them, opened the door to let them in.
“We have a question,” Pauly said. “I think it’s one for Mandy.”
“Yes,” Nico agreed. “School hasn’t started yet,” he said, “but there are no children playing outdoors.”
“I think Mandy is in the workroom,” Pippa said. “Come on, Nico! Pauly and I can help you up the stairs.”
It took a while, as it always does, for the two smallest dolls and Nico, who can’t bend his elbows or knees, to get up the stairs. Nico is able to just climb the stairs without help, but he realized that Pippa and Pauly really enjoyed helping him. It made them feel useful, and maybe they even needed to feel useful because they are so much smaller than the rest of the dolls who live in The Writer’s home. Anyway, he was very slow getting up the stairs if no one helped him, and he didn’t like to make them wait.
Mandy was in the workroom, just as Pippa had predicted. She was sitting on the daybed with her knitting.
Veronika was also there, sewing. Both dolls looked up when the door opened, and Pippa and Pauly came in with Nico.
The three younger dolls climbed up and sat on the daybed next to Mandy. “We have a Mandy question,” Pippa explained. She didn’t know exactly what the question was. She only knew it had something to do with why no children were playing outdoors.
Pippa looked at Pauly, so he would know he should ask his question. She didn’t want to guess and make a mistake.
“Well,” Pauly began, “it’s actually Nico’s question, but I was wondering, too. School hasn’t started yet, but there are no children playing outdoors. I thought it had something to do with why the sky is a funny yellow color, because the same thing happened last year. I mean, the sky was this funny color and no children were out playing when Pippa and I came home from our trip to the beach.”
All the dolls looked at the window. The curtains were closed, but they could see that the light coming in didn’t look normal. They had all been outside to see the sky today or they had looked out the window, because the light coming into the house didn't look right.
“You were right,” Mandy said, “to connect those two things. That was actually very clever of you. It shows you can learn from your own experiences.”
“If we could smell,” Mandy went on, “we would notice that the air doesn’t smell right, either. It would smell as if someone had a fire in the fireplace, although it’s much too warm for that. It would smell the way a campfire smells when you’re toasting marshmallows, although no one has a campfire, and no one is toasting marshmallows. It’s the smell of wood burning.”
The other dolls looked at each other and wondered what it would be like to be able to smell wood burning.
“So the kids stay indoors because it smells bad outdoors, and they don’t like it?” Nico asked.
“That might be part of it,” Mandy agreed, “but the smell, in this case, is a sign that the air is bad.”
“You see,” Mandy explained, “real human children need to breathe the air to live.”
The other dolls tried to pretend to breathe. They knew that breathing was sucking air into your body, mostly using your nose, and then letting it go out again. Dolls’ noses look real, but they don’t really have holes to let the air go in and out, but they have good imaginations, so they can pretend, and dolls live on imagination. It’s like air and food to them.
“All human beings and real animals,” Mandy said, “need to breathe, but they need air that’s mostly clean to stay healthy.”
“When human children breathe in,” she continued, “their lungs––the organs human people and many animals have for this––take in something called oxygen (OX-uh-gin), which is a gas. Their bodies use it to run on. Their lungs attach a waste gas to the oxygen and change it into something called carbon dioxide (KAR-bun dy-OX-eyed).”
“When they breathe out,” Mandy explained, “they get rid of the carbon dioxide.” Mandy tried to show them a picture in their heads of what lungs were like inside a real human person, because dolls don't have lungs. The other dolls saw this picture with their minds.
“So they can’t breathe when the air smells like smoke?” Pippa asked.
“They can breathe,” Mandy said, “but the tiny particles in the smoke can stay in their lungs. It can make them sick, and for human people who already have a problem with their lungs or with their breathing, it can be very bad.” Mandy tried to think of a way to explain particles of smoke to the other dolls.
“There are always little particles or invisible pieces of stuff in the air,” Mandy explained, “and most of it is harmless, unless it's something people are allergic (ah-LER-jik) to. It floats around in the air, and we don’t see it unless the sun hits it in a dark room. When that happens, we call these little particles sunbeams.”
“Children are more sensitive to smoke,” Mandy continued, “because they are growing.”
“What makes the smoke,” Pauly asked, “if no one has a fire in their fireplace and no one is toasting marshmallows?”
“It’s caused by wildfires,” Mandy explained. “We have a very bad wildfire about 100 miles away from us. When the wind blows in our direction, the smoke comes here. When the wind changes, the smoke goes somewhere else.”
“What makes a fire a wildfire?” Nico wanted to know.
“That’s a very good question,” Mandy told him. It was a good question, and Nico is very quiet. Maybe he’s even shy. Mandy thought he could use some encouragement, and maybe he would talk more. “A fire in the fireplace or a campfire in a fire pit in a campground is a good thing. People can use fire for heat when they’re cold or to cook food.”
“Or to toast marshmallows!” Pauly pointed out.
“Or to toast marshmallows,” Mandy agreed. “Those are fires set on purpose for a good reason, and usually people are very good about making sure they stay where they belong. Sometimes, though, fires are set by accident. Lightening can hit a tree and cause a fire to start,” Mandy continued, “or someone leaves a campfire before it’s completely out, or children play with matches and start a fire. The wires that carry electricity sometimes blow over in the wind and can start a fire. Fires can spread and become very big. That’s when we call them wildfires. Human people whose job it is to fight fires have to work very hard to put wildfires out.”
“The earth is getting warmer, too,” Mandy pointed out. “The trees dry out more in the summer now, so it’s easier for them to burn. That makes it easier for fire to get away from people. It makes it harder to put out the fires.”
“Is that why we have the smoke in the summer and not the rest of the year?” Pippa asked.
Mandy agreed, “Yes, and especially toward the end of the summer, after it has been very hot and dry for a long time.”
“I already knew,” Pippa said, “not to play with matches, because lit matches can be very hot and melt your fingers, but now I know another reason: We want real human children to be able to play outside and breathe without getting sick.”
“Another reason,” Mandy added, “to keep wildfires from starting is because trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, so trees give human people the gas they need to live and human people give plants the gas they need. It’s how life on earth continues. Human people depend on plants––and trees are very big plants––to give them oxygen to breathe.”
Just then, Mariah appeared in the door to the workroom. “Jolena’s back from New Zealand!” she exclaimed. “Her ride just pulled up in the driveway!”
Just like that, the workroom emptied out. No one needed help getting down the stairs.
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
Copyright © 2023, 2024 by Peggy Stuart
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