Fable · Level 1 · 107 words

Two Piles of Acorns

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

All autumn, Pip the squirrel worked to have the biggest store in the wood. She buried acorns everywhere: under roots, near the stream. She did not mark the spots. "More," she said. "More is what matters."

Her neighbor Hazel buried only forty acorns and pressed a small white stone over each one. Pip laughed at the little pile.

Then snow covered the wood. Pip dug here and there and found almost nothing. Her acorns were everywhere, and so they were nowhere. Hazel followed her stones and found every one. She shared with Pip until spring.

A small store you can find beats a big store you lose.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. What lesson does this fable teach?

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A. A supply you can find when you need it is worth more than a bigger one you cannot.
The fable sets Pip's huge unmarked pile against Hazel's forty marked acorns, then lets winter test both. The last line states the moral: a small store you can find beats a big store you lose. Hard work is not the problem; losing track of it is.

2. Why does Pip find almost nothing when the snow comes?

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D. She did not mark her spots, so she cannot remember where her acorns are.
Put two clues together: early on, "She did not mark the spots," and later, her acorns "were everywhere, and so they were nowhere." The acorns still exist; she just cannot find them. No thief, flood, or deep hole appears in the story.

3. In "the biggest store in the wood," the word "store" means:

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B. a supply saved up for later
No one buys or sells anything in this fable. Pip is burying acorns to eat in winter, so her "store" is the food she has saved up. The other common meaning of the word, a shop, does not fit a forest.

4. How many acorns did Hazel bury?

Show answer for question 4

C. Forty
The text states it in one sentence: "Her neighbor Hazel buried only forty acorns." The word "only" is there to contrast her count with Pip's everywhere-pile.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.