FREE INTERACTIVE STORY · AGES 9–11
The Valley Under the Ice: a free interactive story
On a polar research trip, our hero follows a crack in the ice down into a hidden valley, warm with steam, green with ferns and full of fossils. Your child makes two choices about how to explore it and who to tell, and the four endings weigh discovery against protection.
- Reading age 10
- 2 short chapters, 2 choices and 4 endings
- About 3 minutes
- Science fiction
Read the story
Choose your hero
Paint it your way
Chapter 1The warm crack
Out on the ice, everything was white and silent, so Zuri noticed the steam straight away: a thin, warm plume rising from a crack no wider than a door.
Professor Lund lowered a thermometer into it and frowned at the reading. “Twenty degrees,” she said. “That isn’t possible. Not here.”
With ropes, helmets and a great deal of care, the team climbed down. At the bottom, the crack opened into a valley the size of a cathedral, roofed with glowing ice.
Warm springs bubbled between ferns taller than a person. And in the rock walls, everywhere they looked, were fossils: spiral shells, long-necked skeletons, leaves pressed flat for millions of years.
“Nobody has ever seen this,” whispered Kit, the team’s young geologist. The question hung in the warm air: what should they do first?
What happens next is up to your child
What should Zuri do first?
Questions for grown-ups to ask
Did you spot it?
- EasyWhat gave away the hidden valley?Answer: A thin plume of warm steam rising from a crack in the ice.
- MediumWhy was the team worried about telling the world?Answer: Too many visitors might damage the fragile valley.
- HarderEach ending weighs discovery against protection. Which ending do you think got the balance right? Why?Answer: Any answer with reasons; for example, protecting first was slower but safer, while reporting with rules shared the knowledge sooner.
Talk about it
- If you found something amazing that nobody had ever seen, who would you tell first? Why?
- Professor Lund says patience is a scientist’s most important tool. Do you agree?
Words to talk about
- plume
- A tall, thin cloud of steam or smoke.
- fragile
- Easily damaged or broken.
- species
- A group of living things of the same kind that can breed together.
- geologist
- A scientist who studies rocks and how the Earth was made.
Reading it together
The Valley Under the Ice is a discovery story at Litsee’s reading level for age 10. Its choices have no single right answer: each weighs the excitement of sharing a discovery against the need to protect something fragile, which makes it a strong story to discuss.
Each part has a real fact card about dinosaurs and fossil hunting from the Litsee app’s fact bank, including Mary Anning, the fossil hunter of Lyme Regis.
Talk about real places that are protected so that people can study and enjoy them without damaging them, such as nature reserves or World Heritage Sites.
About this story
- Reading age
- 10 (ages 9–11). Written for Litsee’s reading level for age 10, where sentences are mostly 11–20 words long.
- Length
- 2 short chapters, 2 choices and 4 endings. Each way through is 312–329 words.
- Reading time
- About 3 minutes for a 10-year-old reading on their own, at Litsee’s pacing of 130 words a minute for that age. Reading aloud to your child is usually quicker.
- Book band
- Roughly Dark Blue, if your child’s school uses book bands (schemes differ; see our book bands guide).
- Characters
- Professor Lund, the expedition leader, Kit, a young geologist
- Theme
- Science fiction