The Card Between Two Circles

Chapter 1Red Here, Triangles There

Rebbi drew two large overlapping circles on a paper chart.

One was labeled RED. The other was labeled TRIANGLES.

The boys would place teacher-provided shape cards where they belonged. No glue was needed; they could move a card while explaining.

Mendy held a red circle, a blue triangle, and a red triangle.

The first two seemed easy.

He placed the red circle in RED and the blue triangle in TRIANGLES.

Then he stopped with the red triangle halfway across the table.

Chapter 2Moving It Back

Mendy put the red triangle in RED.

Yossi looked at its three corners.

"It is a triangle."

Mendy moved it into TRIANGLES.

"It is also red," Yossi said.

Mendy moved it back.

"You cannot keep making it wrong," he complained.

Yossi had not changed the card's color or shape. He had named a true thing each time.

Mendy wished every card had one quiet home.

Chapter 3The Shared Middle

Rebbi came to the chart.

"Which description stopped being true when you moved it?"

Mendy looked at the red triangle.

"Neither."

Rebbi pointed to the overlapping part of the circles.

It lay inside RED and inside TRIANGLES at the same time.

Mendy had treated the two descriptions as though a card could belong to only one.

He placed the red triangle in the shared middle.

Its corners did not turn round. Its color did not turn blue. Both labels still fitted.

Chapter 4A Blue Circle

The next teacher-provided card was a blue circle.

Mendy reached toward the middle again, pleased to have found a new place.

Then he read the labels.

The blue circle was neither red nor a triangle.

He asked Rebbi where a card fitting neither description should go.

The teacher indicated the space outside both circles on the same chart.

Mendy put it there.

The shared middle was not a place for every difficult card. It had two specific requirements.

Chapter 5Explaining Without Moving

Yossi collected the next approved cards.

Before placing each one, Mendy described its color and shape.

A red square went in RED only. A green triangle went in TRIANGLES only. Another red triangle went in the shared part.

The boys checked each description separately.

Naming its second feature did not require moving a card already in the right place.

Rebbi asked Mendy to explain the middle.

"Both descriptions fit," he said.

Chapter 6One Card, Two True Things

At cleanup, the boys returned all the loose cards to the teacher's tray.

Yossi held up the first red triangle.

"It traveled far for something that stayed the same."

Mendy laughed.

On his own paper, he drew the two circles and one triangle in their overlap.

The red triangle sat where both descriptions fitted.