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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage was chosen because it shows the cost of one morning of wilderness on Brian's body — puffy, swollen, squinting — in a single sentence. It uses three of today's vocabulary words (PUFFY, SWOLLEN, MOSQUITOES) and teaches students that Paulsen's survival writing turns abstract danger into exact, physical detail.
The backs of his hands were puffy and his eyes were almost swollen shut from the mosquitoes, and he saw everything through a narrow squint.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell chapter four as a sequence: the opening flashback to the Secret, Brian waking by the lake, the night of sleep, the dawn mosquito attack, and Brian's survey of the lake. Use specific images — the time 3:31, the keening throb, the swarming hordes, the beaver lodge — to keep your retelling grounded in the text.
Discussion Questions
- Paulsen opens chapter four with a memory of the Secret before returning to the crash. What does this ordering tell us about which pain is more dangerous to Brian — the physical injury of the crash or the emotional injury of what he saw at the Amber Mall?
- Brian thinks, 'If you keep walking back from good luck, you'll come to bad luck.' What does this sentence reveal about how Brian now understands cause and effect in his own life, and why is this a turning point in how he thinks?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Larger than usual because of injury or bites. Brian's forehead and eyes both look this way after the crash and the insect attack.
Item 2
Soft, raised, and filled with fluid from irritation. The backs of Brian's hands look this way from mosquito bites.
Item 3
Tiny biting insects that feed on blood and swarm in warm weather. These nearly cover Brian's body at dawn.
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 5 more questions in the complete study guide
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