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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the moment Jay Berry looks down at one of Grandpa's coconuts and sees a monkey face looking back. It is one of the quietest jokes in the whole book: the BAIT they bought to trick the monkeys looks just like a monkey. A boy who copies this sentence is learning to see with the patience Rawls teaches — to turn a thing over and over in his hands until the thing shows him its secret. Rawls uses the tiny size words ('small,' 'tiny,' 'small') three times in a row to shrink the coconut down into something sweet and alive. The hairy fiber is real, the black eyes are just marks, and the tiny mouth is only a shape — but the face is real now because Jay Berry has seen it. That is how imagination works.
In the pointed end of it, underneath the brown hairy-looking fiber, I saw what looked like two small black eyes and a tiny mouth. They made it look exactly like the face of a small monkey.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Tell the story of Chapter 12 in four sentences. Include Grandpa buying all the coconuts at the Wiley Mercantile, meeting Patty the girl at the candy counter, the coconut-face discovery on the ride home, and the monkeys stealing the coconuts and hanging Daisy's ribbons all through a sycamore tree.
Discussion Questions
- What in the story tells you that Jay Berry is a LOVING brother and son, even when he gets teased?
- What in the story tells you that the monkeys are PLAYING a joke on Jay Berry and Grandpa, not just stealing?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
coming to a sharp end, not rounded or flat
Item 2
a dark earth color, like tree bark or chocolate
Item 3
covered with lots of little hairs, the way a puppy's back is
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Critical Thinking
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