Zola Notices Everything

  Naming the sound

Zola named the scariest sound in the hotel

Zola sitting up awake in a dark hotel room hugging her bunny, listening to a noise

Somewhere down the corridor, at about eleven at night, something went CLUNK-rrrrrRRRR-clunk.

In an unfamiliar room, in the dark, that is a genuinely alarming noise. Zola sat straight up. Then she remembered that she is a noticer, and that a sound you can name is a sound you can tame.

So she and her dad went and found it. It was the ice machine, refilling itself, which is possibly the least frightening thing in the entire world.

She went back to bed. It clunked again around midnight and she didn't even open her eyes.

Try it this week: In a new place, go and find one mystery noise before bed. Name it out loud.

Zola's word hunt

Five words from this story are hiding in the grid. They read across → and down ↓ — never backwards. Tap the first letter, then the last letter.

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  • SOUND
  • ZOLA
  • NAMED
  • HOTEL
  • CLUNK

Meet the books Free calm-down cards

← Zola tried one bite of something orange