DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE by Peter Abrahams

1 2014 - 2015 BOOK REVIEWS & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Vermont Department of Libraries Montpelier, VT Table of Contents About This Guide 1 Black: Doll Bones 2 DiCamillo: Flora & Ulysses 3 Federle: Better Nate Than Ever 5 Fleming: Saturday Boy 6 Frost: Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War 8 Gewirtz: Zebra Forest 10 Goldblatt: Twerp 12 Grabenstein: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello s Library 14 Greenberg & Jordan: The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius 16 Harrington: Sure Signs of Crazy 17 Hasak-Lowy: 33 Morgan Sturtz Kicks My Butt 18 Hopkinson: The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel 19 Kadohata: The Thing About Luck 21 Kurtz: The Adventures of a South Pole Pig 22 LaValley: The Vine Basket 23 Leyson: The Boy on the Wooden Box 25 Marino: Hiding Out at the Pancake Palace 27 McNeal: Far Far Away 28 Ottaviani: Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas 30 Peck: The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail 31 Pileggi: Prisoner 88 32 Sloan: Counting by 7s 33 Stone: Courage Has No Color 35 Sullivan: Golden Boy 36 Swanson.

2 The President Has Been Shot! : The Assassination of John F. Kennedy 38 Timberlake: One Came Home 40 Urban: The Center of Everything 42 Vande Velde: Frogged 44 Vawter: Paperboy 45 Williams-Garcia: Be Eleven 47 Generic Questions 49 About This Guide This guide was compiled by members of the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award Committee. Our intent is to provide a booklet that will support the use of the DCF program in schools and libraries. For the guide to be most effective, we strongly suggest that the librarian or teacher supervising the program read all the books on the 2014-2015 list. Many public libraries will have the new list by the summer, which means you can get a head start before the school year begins.

3 No synopsis can possibly take the place of reading a book; however, we recognize that reading and remembering the details of 30 books can be a challenge. It is hoped that the reviews will jog your memory! Since many DCF readers choose and read books on their own, the intent of the questions is to promote discussion among readers of DCF books. This dialogue can take place between student/adult, student/student or in small groups of readers. Most, but not all, of the questions were written to promote critical thinking and to seek opinions, not right answers. None of the questions was designed for purposes of assessment. The generic questions at the end of the booklet can be used in discussions in which readers have read different books.

4 They are taken from Susan Zimmerman's book, 7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It! (Three Rivers Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7615-1549-6). Author websites, if available, are found at the end of the reviews. Some reviews include additional relevant websites. If there is no web address, check the website of the publisher of the book. Their author biographies are usually easy to access and often quite informative. Compilers: Meg Allison Lauren Chabot Caitlin Corless Suzanne Loring Hannah Peacock Julie Pickett Mary Linney, Committee Chair Grace Greene, VTLIB liaison to DCF Committee 1 Holly Black DOLL BONES Margaret K. McElderry, 2013.

5 ISBN: 978-1- 4169-6398-1. $ 256 pages. Zach, Poppy and Alice have been friends forever. They love playing with their action figures and dolls, creating a magical world of adventure and heroism. Until, without warning, Zach s father throws out all his toys, declaring that he s too old for them. Zach is furious and upset and embarrassed. His only way of coping is to stop playing with Poppy and Alice altogether. He s too upset to tell them why. Poppy and Alice need to get him back, so one night they pay Zach a visit, and tell him about a series of mysterious occurrences. Poppy swears she is being haunted by a china doll, The Queen, who rules over their imaginary land. The doll has told Poppy that she is made from the ground-up bones of a murdered girl.

6 They must return the doll to where the girl lived, and bury it. Otherwise the three children will be cursed for Curriculum connections: Language Arts: Have your students write a scary story. Or sit in a circle, start a story and have each person add on to it around the circle, making it scarier and scarier. Create fan fiction. Write your own different ending to the story. Art/Dramatic Art: This book would make a great dramatic read-aloud and/or Reader s Theatre. Write your own script based on the character s imaginary play or make up your own imaginary world. Create a puppet show and act it out. Discussion questions: Do you think Zach s father was wrong to throw out his toys?

7 How did Zach s father change in the book? Did you feel differently about him in the end? Do you think Poppy was telling the truth the whole time? Do you believe her story about the doll? What do you think happened to the Queen? What do you think was the scariest part of the story? Would you have liked a different ending? How might the author have ended it differently? Who is your favorite character and why? If you loved this, you may like: Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. Bloomsbury, 2002. Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book. HarperCollins, 2008. Hahn, Mary Downing. Wait Till Helen Comes. Clarion, 1986. Legrand, Claire. The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls. Simon & Schuster, 2012.

8 Author website: 2 Kate DiCamillo FLORA AND ULYSSES: THE ILLUMINATED ADVENTURES Candlewick, 2013. ISBN: 978-0- 76366-040-6. $ 240 pages. As Flora Belle Buckman sits in her room reading a comic book, disobeying the contract* she signed with her mother, she hears what sounds like a jet engine in her neighbor s yard. She looks out the window to see Mrs. Tickham s runaway vacuum sucking up a poor squirrel and rushes out to save the day. After giving mouth-to-mouth on lips that taste fuzzy, damp and slightly nutty, Flora manages to bring the little creature back to life. The encounter with the vacuum and his new human friend has left the squirrel feeling very grateful, happy and in possession of some new powers, including super-squirrel strength.

9 Thus begins the friendship and adventures of Flora and Ulysses. As the narration alternates between girl and squirrel, the two new friends, along with Tootie Tickham s blind nephew William Spiver, set out to deal with the crazy cast of adults who disrupt and enrich their lives. Holy bagumba! *In this contract, Flora agrees to turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics and toward the bright light of true literature. Her mother wrote the contract. Her mother writes romance novels for a living. Curriculum connections: Language Arts Poetry: Read the novel s Squirrel Poetry - What It Said ( ) and from the epilogue, Words for Flora ( ). Write your own squirrel poem from Ulysses to Flora.

10 Write a poem in response, from Flora to Ulysses. Art: Every time Ulysses does anything heroic, there is a comic strip of the action. Choose your favorite scenes from the book and draw your own comic strip version of them. Creative writing: Peter Parker was turned into Spiderman from a radioactive spider bite, Bruce Banner became The Incredible Hulk after a gamma radiation explosion and now Ulysses has been turned into a superhero squirrel after being vacuumed up by the Ulysses 2000X. Write your own transformation to superhero story what happens to your regular human or animal character to give them their superpowers? Discussion questions: Why do you think Flora s mother makes her sign the contract ?