Fiction_L Archives Maze like experiment Dates: 3/23/02,1:08 PM  through  3/27/02,9:02 PM  (7 postings) Search for: Select one or more indexes to search: 2011-current     2009-2010     2004-2008    1995-2003    (Matches from each index will be displayed separately in the results page.) Return to March 2002 thread menu   |   Fiction_L Archives Menu

FROM: "Lisa Colcord" <[removed]@ci.glendale.az.us>
REC'D: 3/23/02, 1:08 PM

Received this request from another list. Can anyone help?

Thanks!
Lisa

I'm hoping you can help me with the title of a book or short story. It is about a group of people who are taken out of their normal lives and placed in a maze with lots of stairs & landings. There is no food. Some of the people find a combination of movements make food
pellets appear. So they repeat the movements which over time get more and more complicated in order for the food to appear. It turns out to be some big biological labrat type study. Does this sound at all
familiar?

FROM: JONI <[removed]@earthlink.net>
REC'D: 3/23/02, 1:51 PM

This is the House of Stairs, by William Sleator. Here's my booktalk on
it. Hope this helps--it's a super book, great for middle schoolers, and
low reading level high schoolers. Even though it's about 25 years or so
old, it still holds up and kids still read it!

JONI

Joni Richards Bodart
Univ of Denver/DPL

House Of Stairs
By William Sleator
In order to understand this book, you have to use your imagination. You
have to imagine a place made up entirely of stairs. No ceiling, no
floor, no walls, just stairs. In every direction you look, nothing but
stairs. And if you try to go up, pretty soon all you find are stairs
that go down. If you go down, all you find are stairs that go up. And if
you try to go in any one direction, the stairs turn back on themselves,
and you realize you're trapped in one section of this house of stairs.
This is the situation that five teenagers, three girls and two boys,
find themselves in. They get together and realize they have some things
in common. They're all sixteen; they're all orphans, wards of the state;
they all live in state orphanages; and none of them have any idea where
they are, why they're here, or how they got here. But they do know that
the two essentials are food and water, and they begin to explore.
On a landing where two of the staircases come together, up nearly as
high as you can go, they find a small indentation, like a bowl set down
into the landing. It's full of water, fresh water. It's always fresh,
and the water level never changes. So now they have water. Then on a
landing further down, one of the girls finds a red light set into the
landing. By now they've figured out that they've been put there by
someone who's probably keeping an eye on them. The red light looks like
the perfect place to hide a TV camera. So Blossom, who found it, starts
to talk to it: "Let us out of here! I don't want to stay here--I want to
go home!" and so on. But nothing happens. Pretty soon she gets mad and
makes a face at it. And the light spits out a little pellet of food. She
eats it, and it's good! So she tries it again--and it works again!
Pretty soon she's making faces and eating as fast as she can. She isn't
being very quiet about it, and when the other kids show up, Blossom
explains what's going on and they try it too. But it doesn't work for
anyone else, and when Blossom tries to get more food for the others, the
food machine doesn't work for her either! So the group has begun to
learn first two lessons from the food machine: Everyone has to do
something different to get food, and the food machine only gives food at
certain times, not whenever you want it to.
Gradually the machine begins to teach them other lessons, to train them
as you'd train an animal, by giving them food when they do the right
thing and withholding food when they don't. Eventually they learn what
they call a dance. It isn't really a dance, they just stand in a circle
around the light and they each do what the light has taught them to
do--snap their fingers, hop around, clap their hands--all nonsense
motions, but when they do them at the right time, all together, the
machine will produce enough food for one day. It's never enough to keep
them from being hungry or to fill them up. It's just enough to keep them
from starving to death. They are always hungry, and so they are also
grouchy and nervous.
Then one morning, they get up and perform their dance and the food
machine doesn't give them anything. They try it again and again--still
nothing. The two boys begin to shout at each other--"It's your fault."
"No way! It's your fault!" And then one hits the other and the food
machine suddenly begins to produce more food than it ever has before.
They all begin to eat as fast as they can, but all of a sudden, one of
the girls stops--"Wait! Can't you see what they're doing to us? Can't
you see what this means? From now on we'll have to hit each other, hurt
each other, maybe eventually kill each other in order to get food!"
Will any of them survive the House of Stairs?
--Joni Richards Bodart

FROM: "Lisa Colcord" <[removed]@ci.glendale.az.us>
REC'D: 3/23/02, 3:27 PM

Sounds good to me! I'll pass it on....and thanks!

Lisa


Lisa Colcord
Librarian
Glendale Public library
Glendale, AZ

....my views are my own....

-The secret to life is enjoying the passage of time- James Taylor

>>> [removed]@earthlink.net 03/23/02 12:44PM >>>
This is the House of Stairs, by William Sleator. Here's my booktalk on
it. Hope this helps--it's a super book, great for middle schoolers, and
low reading level high schoolers. Even though it's about 25 years or so
old, it still holds up and kids still read it!

JONI

Joni Richards Bodart
Univ of Denver/DPL

House Of Stairs
By William Sleator
In order to understand this book, you have to use your imagination. You
have to imagine a place made up entirely of stairs. No ceiling, no
floor, no walls, just stairs. In every direction you look, nothing but
stairs. And if you try to go up, pretty soon all you find are stairs
that go down. If you go down, all you find are stairs that go up. And if
you try to go in any one direction, the stairs turn back on themselves,
and you realize you're trapped in one section of this house of stairs.
This is the situation that five teenagers, three girls and two boys,
find themselves in. They get together and realize they have some things
in common. They're all sixteen; they're all orphans, wards of the state;
they all live in state orphanages; and none of them have any idea where
they are, why they're here, or how they got here. But they do know that
the two essentials are food and water, and they begin to explore.
On a landing where two of the staircases come together, up nearly as
high as you can go, they find a small indentation, like a bowl set down
into the landing. It's full of water, fresh water. It's always fresh,
and the water level never changes. So now they have water. Then on a
landing further down, one of the girls finds a red light set into the
landing. By now they've figured out that they've been put there by
someone who's probably keeping an eye on them. The red light looks like
the perfect place to hide a TV camera. So Blossom, who found it, starts
to talk to it: "Let us out of here! I don't want to stay here--I want to
go home!" and so on. But nothing happens. Pretty soon she gets mad and
makes a face at it. And the light spits out a little pellet of food. She
eats it, and it's good! So she tries it again--and it works again!
Pretty soon she's making faces and eating as fast as she can. She isn't
being very quiet about it, and when the other kids show up, Blossom
explains what's going on and they try it too. But it doesn't work for
anyone else, and when Blossom tries to get more food for the others, the
food machine doesn't work for her either! So the group has begun to
learn first two lessons from the food machine: Everyone has to do
something different to get food, and the food machine only gives food at
certain times, not whenever you want it to.
Gradually the machine begins to teach them other lessons, to train them
as you'd train an animal, by giving them food when they do the right
thing and withholding food when they don't. Eventually they learn what
they call a dance. It isn't really a dance, they just stand in a circle
around the light and they each do what the light has taught them to
do--snap their fingers, hop around, clap their hands--all nonsense
motions, but when they do them at the right time, all together, the
machine will produce enough food for one day. It's never enough to keep
them from being hungry or to fill them up. It's just enough to keep them
from starving to death. They are always hungry, and so they are also
grouchy and nervous.
Then one morning, they get up and perform their dance and the food
machine doesn't give them anything. They try it again and again--still
nothing. The two boys begin to shout at each other--"It's your fault."
"No way! It's your fault!" And then one hits the other and the food
machine suddenly begins to produce more food than it ever has before.
They all begin to eat as fast as they can, but all of a sudden, one of
the girls stops--"Wait! Can't you see what they're doing to us? Can't
you see what this means? From now on we'll have to hit each other, hurt
each other, maybe eventually kill each other in order to get food!"
Will any of them survive the House of Stairs?
--Joni Richards Bodart

FROM: Sandy Westbrook <[removed]@crlc.org>
REC'D: 3/25/02, 8:12 AM

This is "The House of Stairs" by William Sleator and one of the scariest
young adult novels I've read. The group of people are teenagers and it is
indeed about an experiment. The book raises many issues and would be great
for a book discussion.

Sandy Westbrook
South Windsor Public Library
South Windsor, CT 06074
Ph 860-644-1541
Fax 860-644-7645
[removed]@crlc.org

At 12:05 PM 3/23/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Received this request from another list. Can anyone help?
>
>Thanks!
>Lisa
>
>I'm hoping you can help me with the title of a book or short story. It is
about a group of people who are taken out of their normal lives and placed
in a maze with lots of stairs & landings. There is no food. Some of the
people find a combination of movements make food
>pellets appear. So they repeat the movements which over time get more and
more complicated in order for the food to appear. It turns out to be some
big biological labrat type study. Does this sound at all
>familiar?
>
>
>......................................................................
>Need to subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives?
>Everything Fiction_L: http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html
>

FROM: "Diane Giarrusso" <[removed]@mailserv.mvlc.lib.ma.us>
REC'D: 3/25/02, 9:37 AM

I believe this is HOUSE OF STAIRS by William Sleator.

Diane H.C. Giarrusso
Coordinator of Community Planning
Pollard Memorial Library
33 Middle St.
Lowell, MA 01852
978-970-4120
978-970-4117 fax
[removed]@mailserv.mvlc.lib.ma.us
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lisa Colcord" <[removed]@ci.glendale.az.us>
To: "Fiction_L" <[removed]@maillist.webrary.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2002 1:05 PM
Subject: Maze like experiment


> Received this request from another list. Can anyone help?
>
> Thanks!
> Lisa
>
> I'm hoping you can help me with the title of a book or short story. It is
about a group of people who are taken out of their normal lives and placed
in a maze with lots of stairs & landings. There is no food. Some of the
people find a combination of movements make food
> pellets appear. So they repeat the movements which over time get more and
more complicated in order for the food to appear. It turns out to be some
big biological labrat type study. Does this sound at all
> familiar?
>
>
> ......................................................................
> Need to subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives?
> Everything Fiction_L: http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html

FROM: "Susan T. Byra" <[removed]@emrl.lib.ms.us>
REC'D: 3/26/02, 9:24 AM

This sounds like a YA book I read years and years ago in grad school. I
want to say it's by Robert Cormier, but I could be very wrong about
that. But I do remember the part about the food pellets and how a
couple of them eventually fought their way out and discovered what was
really going on.
Not much help, was I?

--
Susan T. Byra, MLS
Director, East Miss. Regional Library

Now I believe that there are unicorns - William Shakespeare

FROM: Marie McColley <[removed]@jefferson.lib.co.us>
REC'D: 3/27/02, 9:02 PM

Lisa,

Could it be William Sleator's House of Stairs?

Marie McColley
Reference Librarian
Columbine Library
Jefferson County Public Library
7706 W. Bowles Avenue
LIttleton, CO 80123
303-932-2690
303-932-3041 (fax)
[removed]@jefferson.lib.co.us
Find us on the Web: http://jefferson.lib.co.us


-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa Colcord [[removed]@ci.glendale.az.us]
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2002 12:05 PM
To: Fiction_L
Subject: Maze like experiment


Received this request from another list. Can anyone help?

Thanks!
Lisa

I'm hoping you can help me with the title of a book or short story. It is
about a group of people who are taken out of their normal lives and placed
in a maze with lots of stairs & landings. There is no food. Some of the
people find a combination of movements make food
pellets appear. So they repeat the movements which over time get more and
more complicated in order for the food to appear. It turns out to be some
big biological labrat type study. Does this sound at all
familiar?

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