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Copywork
About This Passage
Kate DiCamillo demonstrates the technique of contrast in three short sentences: action (kiss, off), state (dark), feeling (afraid). The sequence is so disciplined that the reader's own mood shifts with the lighting. This is how prose can make a reader experience what a character experiences.
Mr. and Mrs. Watson kissed Mercy good night and turned off the light. Mercy's room became dark, very dark, and Mercy did not feel warm and buttery and toasty inside anymore. She felt afraid.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use to push you toward that response?
Discussion Questions
- Kate DiCamillo opens the entire Mercy Watson series with a song instead of an action. We are told what the Watsons sing before we are told what Mercy does. What is the rhetorical effect of opening on a song? What would change if the chapter began with 'Mercy was a pig who lived with Mr. and Mrs. Watson'?
- Mercy decides to leave her bed and sleep with the Watsons. The author uses the word 'decided' for a pig — a deliberate choice. Throughout the book, Mercy is given human verbs: she 'decides,' she 'thinks,' she 'wonders.' What is being claimed about the inner life of this animal? Is the claim a charming fiction, or is the author making a quieter argument about how we underestimate creatures?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
a deeply beloved person or creature — a word that carries weight even when used casually
Item 2
having the rich, soft, warming quality of melted butter; here applied metaphorically to a feeling
Item 3
comfortably warm in the way fresh toast is; a feeling that combines heat with comfort
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Critical Thinking
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