Isabel’s Little Film

Isabel sees Peter flick the corner of his notebook. A tiny drawing seems to jump. She wants to make a little film of a ball bouncing, using a stack of plain cards and a pencil at the kitchen table.

On the first card she draws a blue ball near the top. On the next, it is already on the ground. When Dad holds the cards and Isabel flicks them, the ball flashes between two places. It does not seem to fall.

“It skipped the journey,” Peter says. Isabel looks between her drawings. She adds a card with the ball halfway down, then another with it a little lower. Dad clips the cards at one end so they stay lined up.

The fall looks smoother now, but the ball jumps sideways as well. Isabel notices that she has moved it towards the edge on one card. She holds two cards against the window and compares where the circles sit.

She redraws that circle and adds the bounce. This time, each new drawing changes only a little. Near the ground, the round ball becomes slightly flatter. Peter bends down to watch her flick the corners again.

“It looks heavy,” he says. Isabel tries a second ending, with the ball rising high after it lands. That one seems springy. She keeps both endings loose so they can try each version with the same beginning.

They invite Dad to watch without telling him which ending he will see. He guesses that the low bounce belongs to a heavy ball. Isabel asks what helped him decide. “The squash and the small bounce,” he says.

Isabel clips her favourite ending into place. The little film lasts only a moment, but it holds an afternoon of looking and changing. Before tea, she draws a new first card: a ball perched on a step. What might it do next?