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Copywork
About This Passage
Officer Tomilello holds a small internal court in four sentences. The dialogue with himself enacts jurisprudence at its most basic — the disposition to separate 'strange' from 'wrong.' Kate DiCamillo grants the picture-book a moment of legal reasoning, which is unusual in any form.
'Is it illegal to take a pig for a ride?' Officer Tomilello asked himself. 'I don't believe it is,' he answered himself. 'It is unusual,' he continued. 'Unusual does not equal illegal.'
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary, then identify the most important moment.
Discussion Questions
- Officer Tomilello holds an internal court. Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics V argues that justice is the disposition to follow actual law rather than personal preference. Is Kate DiCamillo writing a small Aristotelian demonstration in a comic register?
- The officer says 'unusual does not equal illegal.' Eugenia in book 1 refused exactly this distinction. The two characters never meet, but the structural opposition is precise. Is the writer using Officer Tomilello as a corrective to Eugenia?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
the careful reasoning by which laws are applied to particular cases
Item 2
the refusal to let personal opinion shape judgment
Item 3
the act of marking one thing as different from another
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Critical Thinking
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