The Library Under the Pond

This is Professor Bramble, a rusty orange fox with round spectacles, and this is Pip, a tiny dragon with shimmery teal scales. Their story happens at the bottom of the old duck pond behind the willow tree. Professor Bramble discovered that there is actually a whole library down there that nobody has visited for a hundred years! The water is so still and green that if you look at exactly the right time in the morning, you can see the top of a stone doorway.

Pip breathes a puff of warm steam on the doorway. The water around it turns into a bubble, so Professor Bramble and Pip can walk in and breathe. Inside, there are hundreds of shelves covered in snails, and the books are all closed tight and silent. Professor Bramble goes very quiet, because a library that doesn't whisper is the saddest thing he has ever seen.

First, Professor Bramble tries reading out loud to them, because that is how you wake up a book. But nothing happens, not even a rustle. Then Pip notices there are tiny scratches on the biggest book's cover that are actually an ancient language. He reads it, and it says the books went to sleep because they were waiting for someone to ask them a question, and no one has asked one in a hundred years.

Pip asks in his tiny voice, "Why is the pond green?" Suddenly, one book on the bottom shelf gives a little shiver and its cover creaks open. It whispers that the green is millions of tiny plants called algae that the ducks love. Professor Bramble's whiskers start twitching. He realizes the books only wake up one at a time, one question each, so they are going to need a LOT of questions.

Professor Bramble says the best questions in the world come from children. They swim back up and hang a little sign on the willow tree that says ASK THE POND A QUESTION, with a jar. Every kid who walks past drops in a question on a scrap of paper, and Pip carries the papers down one at a time in his teacup, which is actually a very good boat.

When the very last book wakes up, the whole library starts whispering at once like rain on a tent, and the snails slide off the shelves because it tickles. The books are so happy that they glow a little bit. The glow floats up through the water, so from the top the pond looks like it has stars in it, and all the kids on the bank gasp. The last book to wake up is the oldest one of all. It says thank you, and then it asks them a question: "What will you do with everything you learned?"

Professor Bramble decides the library should never go quiet again, so he makes the question jar permanent. Pip becomes the official messenger. The books whisper the answer back up through the bubbles so the whole pond hums. Professor Bramble writes on the first page of his notebook, "A library is not actually made of books, it is made of questions," and underlines it twice. That night, Pip falls asleep in his teacup floating right above the library, and the last thing he hears is a hundred books whispering goodnight.