Amelia Bedelia and the Surprise Shower — Chapter 1

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter and identify the central tension.

Discussion Questions

1. Cousin Alalo's literal hearing shows that linguistic habits travel through families. Sapir and Whorf in their early-twentieth-century writings argued that languages shape thought. Is Peggy Parish writing a comic version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
2. Across two books, Amelia has not learned a single idiom. Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics II distinguishes habit (modifiable through practice) from character (settled and no longer modifiable). Is Amelia's literalism habit or character?

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