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Mara and the Stones of Stonewater: A Story of Memory, Money, and the Truth That Cannot Be Taken
Paperback
Series: The Things We Called Money
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Publisher: Piketown Press
Pages: 54
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.15 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
On the island of Stonewater, money is made of stone.
Forty-one limestone discs, each carried home from a quarry across dangerous water. Each carrying the cost of its journey inside it. Each remembered, by every person on the island, in stories passed from grandmother to grandchild.
Ten-year-old Mara is the Rememberer's apprentice. Every night she sits at Grandmother Noa's feet and learns the stones - who carried them, who came home, who didn't. It is the most important job on Stonewater. And then a trader named Callow arrives in a red boat full of smooth pale stones from the northern islands, offering an easier way.
At first no one notices what the new stones are doing to the old ones. Then the price of rice begins to climb. Then Callow holds up a piece of paper and claims that one of Stonewater's oldest stones never really belonged to the family who has stood beside it for three generations.
What Mara remembers is the only thing standing between Stonewater and what comes next.
Mara and the Stones of Stonewater is a chapter book about memory, money, and the courage to stand inside a true story when someone with a more convincing piece of paper is telling a false one. It is inspired by the real history of the Yap islands - where stone discs served as money for centuries, where a sunken stone continued to function as currency because everyone remembered it had gone down, and where in 1871 a real trader did arrive with iron tools and easier stones.
Written for readers ages 8 to 12, with a spareness of language that suits reading aloud to younger children. For families, classrooms, and homeschool curricula that want to introduce children to questions about money, value, and trust through story rather than instruction.
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