She has Letters of the Alphabet and Animals You Can See At The Zoo and Animals You Can't See At The Zoo and Countries and Jobs (and the people who do them)! and The Rabbit War and Songs for Everyone and Baby Princess! and What Does A Blue Do? and What Does A Green Do? and What Does A Yellow Do? and What Does A Grey Do? and What Does An Orange Do? and What Does A Purple Do? and Trains and How To Build Very Tall and Baby's First Tax Policy Guide and Pretty Things For You To See and The Good Night Book.

"They said I am going to be blue because of my hair."

"That is not how it usually works but when we don't have any other information we use hair. I think you'll be a great blue."

"Why do you think so?"

"You ask thoughtful questions, you are good at asserting what you want, and you are very smart, because you can read already even though you are very small."

Lintalai smiles.

"Are you tired?"

"No."

"Would you like to read some of your stories?"

She pulls out The Rabbit War. "I didn't think rabbits had wars."

"That is a book about a war that Baravi fought with rabbits. Baravi lost."

She opens the book.

There is a map of the world. There is a large island, separated from the main continent by a narrow channel, circled. 

This is Baravi. Baravi is a big, nice country with lots of grazing animals.

A long time ago, Baravi did not have any rabbits.

North of Baravi is Litholee. They did have rabbits. Actually, almost the whole world had rabbits - but not Baravi.

Because they were an island, no rabbits had gotten there.

Until one day, someone brought rabbits to Baravi.

We do not know who it was. It might have been a visitor who had a pet. It might have been a careless cargo ship with some rabbit stowaways. It might have been someone who wanted Baravi to have rabbits.

Whoever it was, they made a very bad mistake!

Rabbits had lots of baby rabbits. The baby rabbits grew up and had baby rabbits. And soon Baravi was overrun with rabbits!

In most places that have rabbits, there are also foxes and hawks, which eat rabbits. That means that there are never too many.

But in Baravi there were too many. There were rabbits everywhere. There were rabbits eating all the crops. There were rabbits destroying all the grazing land. There were too many rabbits.

Baravi decided to send their army. They taught them how to kill rabbits and they sent them out to kill as many as they could. 

They did this for years!

There were still rabbits! 

They sent more people with better weapons!

There were still rabbits!

Baravi did not know what to do.

What would you do?

 

 

Baravi asked their greens!

The greens said that the rabbits were probably here to stay. But there would not be as many rabbits if there were rabbit predators.

Baravi did not want to add more animals! That sounded very bad. 

Some greens had a clever idea. They came up with a rabbit flu! They said it could kill all the rabbits.

Other greens were worried. They thought the rabbit flu might get people sick. They had to test it carefully.

After lots of testing, they were sure they had a rabbit flu that would not hurt any people.

Helicopters dropped it on fields.

Most of the rabbits went away.

But not all of them! Some rabbits did not get the flu. And their babies did not get the flu either.

Baravi greens tried again. They made three rabbit flus! No rabbit would be immune to three rabbit flus!

This time it worked.

Doing all of this cost Baravi lots of money - it was as expensive as a normal war.

And lots of Baravi farmers suffered while there were rabbits eating their crops.

Everyone learned that the best way to win a war with rabbits is to catch it before it starts.

Island countries have strict rules when people come to visit - to make sure that they don't have a rabbit in their bag!

This book is very absorbing.

Her parents sit on her bed and snuggle each other and watch her read.

She tries What Greens Do next to corroborate the claim that they do rabbit flus.

Do you have a favorite song? A green did that! Do you have a beautiful painting on your wall? A green did that! Do you take the train to go to the park or to school? A green did that!

Greens are inventors and artists. They come up with ideas for how to make the world better. Greens study how everything works, and then they test new things that might work even better. Greens study history, so that we don't make the same mistakes over and over. Greens study old books, so we know how people used to think and whether they had good ideas we have forgotten.

Greens also study how the country works, so they can make it work better. They research what happens when we change a law, so we know whether the change was a good idea. They look at lots and lots of numbers and do math to help us make better decisions. Running a country is hard. It is easier with greens to study things carefully so we know what to do!

Greens also make beautiful things for people to appreciate. They write stories and plays and movies and television shows. They act in those plays and movies and television shows! They play musical instruments. They design public art installations like this one. 

What do all of these things have in common? They are all smart, creative work. To make great art, you have to know a lot - about paints and brushes and things that other artists have done - and you also have to have a creative spark to think of things that no one has done before.

To do a careful study, you have to know a lot of math and study design and research skills - and you also have to have a creative spark to know what to study and to think of things that might go wrong and to design a great way of using the data you have.

To invent a faster train, you have to know lots of things about how trains go and what we use to build them - and you also have to have a creative spark to think of something even better. 

What do greens do? Greens learn so many things! They understand the thing they do very deeply, better than anyone. And then they use their creative spark to make it even better, and share it with everyone!

She checks her walls for beautiful paintings.

Her walls do not yet have beautiful paintings! There are stars on her ceiling.

Huh. Stars.

"What are movies and television shows?"

"They are like books but have moving pictures instead of words."

She inspects her shelves to see if she has any that move.

He pulls up a video for one-year-olds on his pocket everything. "Like this."

Oh. She watches for a minute. It's pretty boring. She picks up Animals You Can't See At The Zoo.

You cannot see all these miscellaneous animals at the zoo, mostly because they are extinct but sometimes because they are too expensive to keep (they need lots of space) or because this one zoo in Cene has all the living ones and won't share or because they are still in the rainforest and not charismatic enough to be worth having in a zoo as well.