Marbles from the Sky

"Mariah!" Pippa exclaimed from the window. "Come look! Marbles are falling from the sky!"

Mariah came to the window to look. Pippa was right! White balls the size of marbles were falling from the sky.

Whenever one of them hit the house, the dolls could hear a 'plunk' sound. It was raining at the same time. Water was running down the street.

"Does God think we've lost our marbles?" Pippa wanted to know, looking up at Mariah. 

"I don't think so, Pippa," Mariah said. "I've seen this before, although not such big ones. It's called hail (HAYL). The little balls are made of ice."

Just then, there was a flash of light. 

Both dolls jumped. "Lightning!" Pippa cried. "It can melt your vinyl if it hits you."

Then Pippa and Mariah heard a loud boom. "Thunder," Pippa said, a little more calmly. 

Pippa turned to Mariah and said, "Mandy said thunder is the voice of the lightning. It has been a few seconds since the lightning, so it must not be very close."

"Mandy told me all about how light travels faster than sound," Pippa told Mariah solemnly. "That's why we see the lightning before we hear the thunder."

"We're safe in the house," Pippa reassured Mariah then. She was happy she knew something about what was happening, even if she had never heard of hail before.

Mariah knew about thunder and lightning, of course, and wasn't worried, but she was happy to let Pippa reassure her. It was good practice for Pippa.

"What makes the hail, I wonder," Pippa said.

Mariah wondered that, too. "I think," she said, "it has something to do with the wind up in the clouds, but I don't know enough about it to explain it. Let's go ask Mandy."

Pippa thought that was a good idea. She was really interested. By the time the dolls had climbed up the stairs and reached the workroom, the storm was over and the sun was out again. Mandy was on the daybed with the boys, looking out the window.

"We saw a hailstorm!" Pippa gushed her excitement, as she and Mariah came into the room. 

"We watched from here," Billy said. "I took some photos with my camera!"

"We heard the hail hitting the window and the roof," Emil added, "so we came to look. We were just asking Mandy what makes hail," he added.

Mandy climbed down from the daybed. She beckoned to the other dolls to follow her. Then she climbed up to the workroom table and opened up the laptop. "Come up here, and I'll show you a photo," she suggested to the other dolls. "It will help me explain it."

As the other dolls gathered around, Mandy typed in something and a picture appeared on the screen. "When there is a thunderstorm," she explained, "you sometimes can have wind that goes upward through the clouds. That wind is called an updraft. Drops of water are carried upward instead of falling as rain. If the temperature in the clouds is below freezing, the drops reach colder air and then freeze."

"They're heavier than the air," Mandy explained, "so they fall if the wind lets up a bit, but there's more to it." (Of course there's more! There's always more if Mandy is involved.) "This is what I wanted to show you," she said, pointing to the screen on the laptop. The dolls all looked at the screen. The image looked like a glass dish.

"This," Mandy explained, "is a cross section of a hailstone. A scientist cut through the middle of it, cutting it in two and then cut through it again, so it was a slice, like a slice of radish or tomato. Now you can see the layers, like the layers of an onion, from the middle to the outer edges. That shows that the piece of ice froze and then went through a place where it was damp or even wet, and that water collected all around the surface. Then it froze, too."

"Scientists are very curious people," Mandy continued. "They wondered about how these layers were made,They used to think that the ball of ice fell and then was lifted again, several times. They thought that falling through a damp part of the cloud and then getting blown upwards where it was freezing was what made the layers."

"Research has given them a new theory (THEE-uh-ree), though," Mandy said. Then she noticed a puzzled look on Pippa's face. "A theory," she explained, "is a possible explanation for how something happens when you know a lot about something but not everything."

Pippa nodded. She had lots of theories about things, she realized.

Some dolls like to think about something for a while, like Pippa. Billy is the kind of doll who just wants to get on with things. "So what's the new theory?" he asked. 

"Well," Mandy began, "you know that clouds are made of water, but they're not the same all through. There are parts where the water in them is more liquid and there are parts where the water is more like steam, only cool. It's called vapor (VAY-per). It's like a thick gas."

"According to the new theory," Mandy continued, "the ball of ice goes through areas in the cloud where the water is more liquid and parts of the cloud where the water is more like vapor. When it goes through the wetter part of the cloud, it makes this layer you can see through." Mandy pointed to the part of the photo that looked like clear glass.

"What do you suppose happens," Mandy asked, "when the ball of ice moves through the part of the cloud where the moisture is more like vapor?"

"Is that what makes the cloudy part?" Emil asked, pointing to the part of the photo where the cross section was white.

Mandy nodded, "That's the theory now," she agreed. Scientists are doing experiments to find out.

"The cross section isn't a perfect circle," Billy pointed out. "The hail we saw seemed to be perfectly round.

"They can be perfect balls or not," Mandy told them. "Sometimes they have little rounded spikes all over, and some are in between, with an uneven surface like this one."

"The ones we got were like marbles," Pippa said. "White marbles. That's what I thought they were at first."

"Speaking of marbles," Emil said, "the storm is over now. We can go outside to play!"

"Yes," Mandy agreed, "but first I have to tell you the most important thing to know about hail."

The other dolls all looked at Mandy expectantly.

"If you're outside when hail starts to fall," Mandy said, "run and find shelter as fast as you can. It doesn't happen often, but hailstones can be as big as your head sometimes!"

"My head?" Pippa wanted to know.

"Billy's head," Mandy said, "or mine, or even bigger. Those hailstones can do a lot of damage. They can break windows or put a dent in a car roof. They can squash you flat!"

All the dolls except Mandy tried very hard to make their eyes very large to show how shocking this new information was. (They couldn't do it, of course, because their eyes are what they are, but it made them feel better to try.)

Just then, Charlotte came into the room. "The Writer is going out in the car," she said. She's going to the store to buy a new barbecue cover. She sent me to ask if there's anything we need at the store."

"What's wrong with the old barbecue cover," Mandy asked her.

"Go and look at it out the window," was all Charlotte would say.

The dolls all rushed down the stairs, which is faster than going up. Then they climbed up on the windowsills where they could see the barbecue. It was shocking!

This is what they saw.

"I wonder what hailstones the size of your head would do!" Pippa exclaimed in amazement.

Mariah was speechless.

Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia

Pippa: Götz Little Kidz Lotta

You can follow The Doll's Storybook here.

Hail size chart: https://mrcc.purdue.edu/living_wx/hail/index.html

This hail size chart outlines the types of objects that the National Weather Service prefers to be used when reporting hail.  Using marbles as size indicator isn’t advised.

Hail cross-section photo from Wikipedia.

Cloud Photo by Wolf Zimmermann on Unsplash, cropped.

You can follow The Doll's Storybook here.

Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"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.

Do you like our stories? Some of them are available in print:

The stories in Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Being Little, Besties and Distraction.

The stories in Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Best Buds, Getting What You Want and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Our book of poems, Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook includes Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in More Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Welcoming a Stranger, The Rescue, Unmasked, Fuzzy Town––A Play and Sky Blue.

Available now from BookBaby and other booksellers: Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook. The Stories in Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Talking About Boys, Changes, Shhhhh!, Staying After and Money in a Jar.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less, because the vendor gets a cut. The Writer's author's page at Book Baby is here. Scroll down and click on any of the books that interest you. Find our books at Barbara's Bookstore as well, or ask your library to get them for you.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Copyright © 2022, 2026 by Peggy Stuart

There's Sunshine in the Rain!

Billy and Charlotte had to walk Freckles and Pierre early, because it was supposed to rain soon.

"I wish it wouldn't rain," Billy said when they got back to the house. "I wanted to go for a long bike ride today, but if it starts to rain, I'll get wet. The rain is cold."

"We need the rain, Billy," Charlotte said. "The rain helps the plants grow and lets us wash things and gives us water to pretend to drink."
"But my teacher told us the earth is mostly covered with water," Billy said. "Why do we need any more?"
"That's almost all in the oceans, Billy," Charlotte explained, "and it's salty."
"What's wrong with salty?" Billy asked.
"I'm not sure," Charlotte answered. "Let's ask Mandy."

The dolls found Mandy in the living room window. She was knitting. She looked up when the dolls came in.

"Mandy," Charlotte began, "Billy and I have a question about the oceans."
"Yes," agreed Billy. "We have so much water in the oceans, why can't we use it to pretend to drink and to water our plants?"

"That's easy," Mandy replied. "We can only pretend to drink what human people can drink. Human people's bodies need salt, but too much salt will make them sick. The water in the oceans is very salty, much too salty to drink safely. You can taste it and even cook with it, but you can't drink it, because you will get too much salt. It would make the plants sick, too."

"That's too bad," Charlotte said. "There's so much of it! It's too bad we can't use it."

But we do use it," Mandy exclaimed. "That's where our drinking water comes from, and the water we use to wash things and bathe, and to water our plants, but the sun takes the salt out first."

Mandy put down her knitting as Charlotte and Billy looked at each other in surprise.

"Come into the kitchen," Mandy said, "and I'll show you how it works."
Mandy led the two dolls into the kitchen. Jolena was there. She had been looking in the pantry to see what was needed so she could make a grocery list for The Writer.

"Jolena, I need a glass cake pan," Mandy said. "We are going to see how the sun takes the salt out of the water from the ocean."
"I would like to see, too," Jolena exclaimed, pulling out a square cake pan from the cupboard."

"You can use a metal pan for this," Mandy explained, "but I want to use glass, so we can see what's happening. Now we need some other things." Mandy asked Jolena for a small dish that would fit inside the cake pan, some salt, a spoon, a cup of warm water and some plastic wrap.
Jolena knows where everything is in the kitchen, so she found everything Mandy needed.
Mandy filled the cup Jolena gave her with warm water. Then she asked the dolls to help her pour the water into the cake pan.

Next, Mandy had Jolena put a half teaspoon of salt into the water and stir it.

Jolena stirred the water until the salt disappeared. Mandy said it dissolved (dih-SOLVD). She explained that meant the water melted the salt so it couldn't be seen anymore. Then Mandy had each doll dip a finger into the salted water and pretend to taste it. The all agreed that it tasted salty.

Next Mandy asked Billy to place the smaller dish into the cake pan, right about in the middle.

Finally, Mandy and Jolena worked together to cover the whole thing with plastic wrap.

"We need one more thing," Mandy said. "We need something to weigh down the plastic wrap, but only right in the middle, over the smaller dish."
"There are plenty of rocks outside," Billy suggested.
"Rocks will be great," Mandy agreed. "We're going outside anyway. Now please help me take the pan outside."
Each doll took a corner of the cake pan. They worked together to carry the dish outside and place it on the deck. Then Mandy told them to put some small rocks in the middle of the plastic wrap, right over where the small dish was.

"Now we wait," Mandy said. "The sun will do the same thing here that it does when it shines on the ocean."

"But it's supposed to rain soon," Billy said.
"Yes," Jolena agreed, "and this place will be in the shade in a little while."

"That's OK," Mandy told them. "As long as the sun is in the sky, this will work. It just works faster if it's bright sunshine. People use the sun to make electricity, too, and that still works as long as it's daylight," she said. "When we use the power of the sun to work for us," Mandy added, "it's called solar power."

"Hey!" Billy cried. "The sun has a superpower!"

The other dolls nodded in agreement.
"That reminds me! Jolena exclaimed. "We need to make more iced tea. I sometimes use the sun to make it, because it's faster than just putting the jar into the fridge."
"How do you do that?" Charlotte asked. "I like your iced tea."
"I just put some tea bags in a jar with some water," Jolena explained. "Then I leave it in the sun, but Mandy's right. It will work in the shade, as long as the sun is in the sky."

"I have used the sun to dye yarn," Mandy added. "It works the same way as making tea."

"Now," Mandy went on, "we can come back in a couple of hours and check to see what has happened."
The dolls all went indoors to do their homework or read. Mandy went back to her knitting.
Two hours later, Mandy told the other dolls it was time to check their pan of water. When they went back to where they had left the pan, they saw that there was now some water in the little dish.

"How did that get there?" Billy asked.
"It rained in the little dish," Mandy explained. "This is what happens with the ocean, or anywhere there is water. Water is a liquid, like milk or the stuff you use to blow bubbles. When it's warmed by the sun, the water on the surface evaporates (ee-VAH-per-ates). That means it turns into a gas, and mixes with the air. In fact, there is water in the air all around us all the time. When enough water gets together in the air, it turns into clouds."
"So how did it rain in the dish?" Charlotte asked.

"The same way it rains on the earth," Mandy said. "The plastic wrap keeps the air in the cake pan from getting out. That traps the sun's heat inside, so the air outside the pan is cooler than the air inside. When some of the water in the air touches the cooler plastic wrap, it turns back into liquid. We call that condensation (con-den-SAY-shun). When there is enough water, it gets heavier and runs down to the lowest spot, where the rocks makes the plastic wrap lower. Then it drops into the little dish."

"That's because of gravity," Billy said. "Gravity makes the water roll down the inside of the plastic wrap."
"That's right," Mandy agreed.
"So why does it rain here where we live, instead of just over the ocean?" Jolena wanted to know.

"Can anyone guess?" Mandy asked. "Think about how the clouds are made of water."
The other three dolls all though about it.
"Maybe the wind blows the clouds over the land," Charlotte suggested. "If you watch the clouds you can see them move."

"That's right, Charlotte," Mandy agreed. "Now what kind of water did we have in the cake pan?" she asked.
"Salty water," said Billy.
"Like the ocean," agreed Charlotte.
"Let's pretend to taste it," Mandy suggested, "and see if it's still salty. Just stick your finger in and lick the water off it."
The dolls all dipped their fingers into the water in the cake pan and pretended to taste it.

"It's still salty," Jolena said.
The other dolls agreed with Jolena.
"Now let's pretend to taste the water in the little dish," Mandy said.
The dolls took turns tasting the water in the little dish.

"It isn't salty at all," Charlotte said.
They all agreed with Charlotte.
"So the sun moved the water from the pan to the little dish and left the salt behind?" Jolena asked.
"Yes," Mandy agreed.
"So we could just make as much water as we need from the ocean," Jolena said.
"That would be a lot of trouble," Billy pointed out. "That was a lot of work for not very much water."

"There are other ways to remove salt from sea water," Mandy said, "and there are big factories some places in the world where fresh water is scarce," but it's easier if we can get it from rain. Rainwater has the salt removed from it already."

Again, all the dolls agreed.
Suddenly a drop of water fell onto Billy's head. He looked up. "Look!" Billy cried. "It's starting to rain! Isn't that wonderful? I love the rain!"

Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London

Science project in desalinization from: STEAMsational

You can follow The Doll's Storybook here.

Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"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.

Do you like our stories? Some of them are available in print:

The stories in Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Being Little, Besties and Distraction.

The stories in Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Best Buds, Getting What You Want and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Our book of poems, Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook includes Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in More Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Welcoming a Stranger, The Rescue, Unmasked, Fuzzy Town––A Play and Sky Blue.

Available now from BookBaby and other booksellers: Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook. The Stories in Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Talking About Boys, Changes, Shhhhh!, Staying After and Money in a Jar.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less, because the vendor gets a cut. The Writer's author's page at Book Baby is here. Scroll down and click on any of the books that interest you. Find our books at Barbara's Bookstore as well, or ask your library to get them for you.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

<a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/19832501/?claim=j3fj3mbb8kt">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Copyright © 2018, 2024, 2026 by Peggy Stuart