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Copywork
About This Passage
Chosen for the chain and its last link. Fern's answer strings her friends together with one 'and' after another — no commas pausing for breath — so the whole barn cellar arrives in a single happy rush. Then the chain ends on its quietest, biggest word: 'and me.' Without arguing or explaining, Fern files herself among the animals as one of everybody. Copying the exchange gives practice with a question inside quotation marks, a quoted word inside a question, and a long and-chain that saves its surprise for the end.
"Who's 'us'?" asked Mr. Arable. "Oh, everybody in the barn cellar. Wilbur and the sheep and the lambs and the goose and the gander and the goslings and Charlotte and me."
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the breakfast as a meeting of two worlds: Fern's report of the goslings and the egg, her introductions of Templeton and Charlotte — Wilbur's best friend — the speech she repeats word for word, and her parents' growing questions. Then retell the quiet scene after she leaves: the mother's worry and the doctor plan, the father's two maybes. End by naming which world the reader stands in.
Discussion Questions
- Only days ago the reader watched the goslings hatch in the barn; now Fern retells that same morning at the breakfast table, down to Charlotte's exact words about 'unremitting effort and patience.' Why might White replay a scene we already know through Fern's report? Use the words of her retelling and the details we remember from the barn to explain what hearing it again — in the kitchen — shows.
- Mrs. Arable's worry grows in small stage directions: first 'a queer, worried look,' then answering 'rather vaguely,' then 'a worried expression on her face,' and at last a plan spoken 'in a low voice' to ask Dr. Dorian. What does the chapter show by building her worry step by step instead of all at once? Use the words of those descriptions and the details of their order to explain how the worry grows.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Smallest possible; the least trace of something.
Item 2
Acting as if something imaginary were real.
Item 3
Asked yourself about something; let a question stay open.
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Critical Thinking
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