A 9-year-old named Alana imagines building a house and surviving on a deserted island, describing bricks, plumbing, fishing with a spear, and making fire with matches. The adult asks questions that help her think through the details, then suggests Island of the Blue Dolphins as a book to explore the theme further.
Hey Alana, how are you?
I'm good, and how are you?
I'm very well, thank you. So what's up this week?
Um, today we're going to, um, our friend's house because my mom and dad have to go to our apartment, um, to clean up because, because of the construction, there's a layer of white dust everywhere except for really in my room and really the master bedroom.
Got it, got it. So are you wondering about anything? Is there anything that you're wondering about?
No, not really.
Okay, so I'm wondering about, um, do you think that you could figure out how to build a house on your own, or would somebody need to teach you?
Hmm, like, you mean like with real bricks? Because really, the only house like with like toys like blocks that I really liked that I was able to create was here. I made like a castle out of these like different types of blocks. There were multiple of like the same kind, but it was really fun. I knocked it down though.
So you've made a little castle out of blocks. So do you think that— suppose that, you know, there was this big pile of bricks next door. Could you build a house or a castle out of real bricks?
I would do like a regular house, but yeah, if I had a lot of bricks.
Do you know what you would need in addition to bricks, or is bricks all you would need?
I don't know what it's called, but you need like the sticky stuff that you splatter on the bricks to make the other ones stay on the bricks.
Yep, it's called mortar. So bricks and mortar. So you would put the mortar on. Have you ever seen anybody put, lay bricks using bricks and mortar? But you think you, you could figure that out?
Yeah.
Okay, so you're gonna build, and this is just an imaginary thing, so you're gonna build a house with bricks and mortar, and once you have kind of a shell of the outside of it. Do you think you could figure out how to put the inside of it in? Because you don't want to just live in a shell of bricks and mortar, right?
Yeah, I could probably do some of them.
So what do you think you could figure out how to do?
I could use different things for this, like maybe, like other stuff, maybe still bricks and mortar, but I could figure out maybe how to do stairs leading into another another room, maybe the bedroom, and maybe there could be some walls, like for a wide kitchen.
So do you think you would use bricks and mortar for the stairs and the walls, or would you use something else?
Um, for the stairs, I think I would use wood and maybe paint after you're done.
And do you think you could figure out how to make stairs out of wood?
I can try.
Okay. Have you ever seen anybody build something out of wood?
No, not really.
Okay, so you've got the bricks and mortar on the outside. Now we've got wooden stairs. Are the walls wood or the walls brick or the walls something else?
The walls, because the walls are basically just the shell, so it's brick.
Okay, how about a bathroom? How would you, how would you put together a bathroom?
Hmm, most bathrooms are kind of small, so I would kind of like build like maybe two walls that are leading on to one, maybe next to a room or something, or maybe in a room. I would make a door and then somehow I would maybe figure out how to find a toilet, a sink, pipes, and then a shower.
So the pipes, the plumbing, how are you going to get water in and out of the house?
Pipes.
Okay, so you have pipes bringing water in and you hook up the pipes to the shower and the sink and the toilet, and then how do you get the dirty water out?
Toilet.
Okay, but where does it go?
It goes down the drain and into pipes where it gets cleaned. All the dirty stuff is left behind and the clean water goes into the ocean.
Okay, and then how about the kitchen? How would you— would you want a stove and a refrigerator and that kind of stuff?
Yeah, what I'm thinking is maybe buy that from a store or something, furniture, or you could let the customer do that. Yeah, you can put in a refrigerator. You could put in another sink. A stove.
Yeah.
Oven, a microwave.
Mm-hmm. So it sounds like you could kind of figure it out if you had access to everything you needed, like the stove and refrigerator and all of that. Um, and these things are a little bit heavy, but do you think if you had 4 or 5 other kids just as strong as you are that you guys could move a stove into place?
Yeah.
Okay, sometimes there are stories about groups of kids that are maybe lost in the woods or left on an island or something and they have to figure out how to survive together. Do you think that if you were with a group of kids left alone on an island that you guys could figure out how to survive?
Yeah.
What would you do for food?
Um, maybe we could search the island and Then maybe when it's coming dark, walk back onto the beach, find your way back to camp. Um, just like maybe we could send out like a couple kids like to go out into the woods and see if there's any food, animals, maybe if there's any wood or like, um, things we could use. And, um, also if one of our friends had a pocket knife, we could make like an arrow and maybe some— and if we had some string, we could We can make a bow. We could also make a spear if we also had a pocket knife, if we had a big long stick.
And with a bow and arrow, do you think you could catch animals?
Yeah.
So you're good enough at archery to shoot a little rabbit or something?
Probably.
Okay. And if you caught a rabbit, could you cook it and eat it? Okay. Have you ever watched Just Have to Make a Fire?
Yeah.
Could you figure out how to make a fire?
Maybe we brought along matchsticks, so we just have to light one because I've, I've lit matchsticks before.
Okay. Um, have you ever watched any movies of, or TV shows of people who are having to kind of basically survive without modern conveniences?
Um, not really.
Okay, there are all sorts of techniques. So there are techniques for lighting a fire without matches. It's really hard. I think I tried to do it once. It's really, really hard to light a fire without matches. But it, you know, people like the Native Americans, they knew how to do these things. And so kids in those societies would learn how to do those things. Or, you know, Hawaii, you're from Hawaii, your ancestors are from Hawaii, they knew how to do all kinds of things, you know, in terms of fishing and so forth. And so do you think you could catch fish?
Um, I could try because I've only really gone fishing once or twice, but I could probably figure it out.
So what would you If you were stuck on an island and hungry, how would you try to catch fish?
Like he was saying, maybe you could make a spear. Ooh, I can make a bow and arrow. I could tie something like another string to it that's attached to my bow and arrow. And then once the arrow really hits the fish, you just need to pull it back in.
Excellent. So do you think it's kind of fun to try to imagine how you could kind of survive in the wilderness?
Yeah.
It is. I think it's really interesting. So I'm not going to recommend anything right now, but I'll let your dad know about it. I bet your dad knows all sorts of interesting things for you to watch and read. Actually, there's one story. There was actually a real-life story of a young Native American woman who was left on an island alone for like 20 years. I think it's called Island of Blue Dolphins. Have you ever read this?
It's—
I think you're, you're old enough to read this. You're old enough to read this. And I think it's a really, really good story. Um, and it was actually off the coast of California. So I think it's called Santa Catalina Island. It's kind of off the coast of LA, somewhere between LA and San Diego. And she was just alone there for a long time and she survived. And so it's a really interesting story of how— and she was young, I think she might have been 17 when she was, you know, I forget if everybody else died or they— I think they took them all off the island. So I think the missionaries took the rest of the people off the island and she was left behind. So it's an incredible story. Yeah. Does that sound too scary to read or do you think you could you'd be interested in reading something like that.
That's actually pretty interesting.
I think it's interesting. So I'm 99% sure the title is Island of Blue Dolphins, and I'm 99% sure you can read it. You're a good enough reader to read it. So I'll recommend that one, and then I'll talk to your dad about other cool things that you can read or watch along these lines, okay?
Okay.
Okay, I'm gonna let you go for the week. Have a good week, Alana. Bye-bye.
Bye.
