Introducing Yekttis
• Amanda and Ari, eight-year-old twins, discovered
some strange creatures near their home in
Wyoming. These creatures were living in
abandoned prairie dog burrows next to a dirt
road that the twins used as a shortcut to school.
Amanda and Ari started studying these creatures.
They visited them every chance they had.
Because these creatures never came all the way
out of their holes in the ground, Amanda and Ari
could only see their heads. The creatures looked
as though they might have come from another
planet.
Ari loved to make up codes and learn about
languages. After a few months, he learned how
to say some words in the creatures’ own
language, and he taught them a few words in
English and in Spanish. He learned that the
creatures called themselves Yekttis (YEK-tees),
that they came from a very distant planet, and
that they were peaceful.
Amanda liked to study different kinds of living
things. She decided to do a report about the
Yektis for a science project at school. She made
a sketch of the head of each of the Yektis she
had seen. She noticed that many of them were
similar to one another, but that no two were
exactly alike. She used her sketches to figure
out how she could describe to other human
beings what the Yektis looked like.