Mercy Watson to the Rescue — Chapter 11

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter and identify the central tension Kate DiCamillo is dramatizing.

Discussion Questions

1. The breakfast table is the book's resolution and follows one of literature's oldest forms — the shared meal as the close of conflict. Plato's Symposium, the wedding at Cana, the supper at Emmaus, the breakfast at Bag End. Is Kate DiCamillo working in this tradition consciously, or has she found the form by writing through it?
2. The book is organized around a pun. 'Toast' carries both food and honor, and the chapter trusts the pun to complete the resolution. Where else in literature have you seen a writer trust a pun with this much structural weight, and what does the trust commit the writer to?

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