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Copywork
About This Passage
This is chosen because it is the moment Sachar plants the seed of the whole book. Stanley is innocent, but he's on a prisoner bus heading to a camp where he does not belong — because of his great-great-grandfather. The family turns the pain into a joke. Sachar is doing two things at once: telling us Stanley is innocent (the plot) and telling us the Yelnatses live inside a story about a curse (the myth). The whole novel will be the working out of this seed.
Stanley was not a bad kid. He was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-gre...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 3 in four or five sentences. Start with Stanley on the prisoner bus, describe his pretend 'Camp Fun and Games' memory, tell the story of the family curse, name Stanley's father as an inventor, and end with Stanley's arrival at Camp Green Lake.
Discussion Questions
- The bus is hot and the air is 'almost as stifling as the handcuffs.' What is Sachar comparing by putting those two things in one sentence? What does it mean to say the air feels like chains?
- Stanley has arrived at Camp Green Lake and 'couldn't see a lake. And hardly anything was green.' Why does Sachar put these two sentences on their own short lines? What is he doing with the rhythm at the end of the chapter?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Not guilty of a wrongdoing — Sachar tells us Stanley is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted.
Item 2
Officially found guilty of a crime by a court — Stanley was convicted even though he did not do it.
Item 3
The children, grandchildren, and later generations of a particular ancestor — the Gypsy's curse is said to fall on the great-great-grandfather and all his descendants.
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Critical Thinking
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