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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage was chosen because it demonstrates Dahl's rhythm of short, declarative sentences stacking small grotesque details until the last sentence lands the moral consequence — the food makes the man. It also contains three of our vocabulary words (disgusting, stuffed, beastly) in their natural setting.
His food was doughnuts and goose-livers. He mashed the livers into a disgusting paste and then stuffed the paste into the doughnuts. This diet gave him a tummy-ache and a beastly temper.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 1 in four or five sentences: introduce each of the three farmers by name, describe what they look like, what they eat, and what the children who live nearby sing about them.
Discussion Questions
- The author describes each farmer's body and food together — Boggis is enormously fat from boiled chickens, Bunce is a pot-bellied dwarf living on goose-liver doughnuts, and Bean is as thin as a pencil and drinks only cider. What is the author suggesting about the relationship between what a person eats and who a person becomes?
- The author tells us Bean is 'the cleverest of them all.' Cleverness is usually a good quality. Why might the author warn us that Bean's cleverness makes him more dangerous, not less?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Extremely unpleasant or nasty, as if belonging to a wild animal.
Item 2
Small balls of dough cooked in stew or with meat.
Item 3
So unpleasant that it makes you feel sick or strongly dislike something.
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Critical Thinking
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