Summer of the Monkeys — Chapter 3

About This Passage

This passage was chosen because Wilson Rawls paints a small peaceable kingdom under a red oak — the kind of scene you might find in a medieval tapestry of Saint Francis or in a Pennsylvania Dutch fraktur of a child with her animals. Notice how the author lets a single sunbeam 'bore' its way down like a spotlight before he introduces Daisy; the light arrives before the girl. Notice too that the passage moves from overhead (green canopy) to middle distance (squirrel on the cross-arm) to close-up (bunny in her lap). Copying this passage trains a young writer's eye to build a scene in planes of depth.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 3 as a sequence of four negotiations: Jay Berry with his own arithmetic in the dust; Jay Berry with Papa in the cornfield; Jay Berry with Mama at the house; and Jay Berry with Daisy in the playhouse. Each gives a different answer, and each answer costs Jay Berry something different.

Discussion Questions

1. When Jay Berry tries to add up the monkey money in the dust of the road, 'every time I added him to the pot, something went wrong.' What in the story tells you WHY the hundred-dollar monkey makes Jay Berry lose count? What is this moment really showing us about the effect of imagined wealth on a boy's mind?
2. Mama tells Jay Berry he can only go to the bottoms if Papa is 'close by in the fields' so that 'maybe between him and Rowdy, we could at least find your body.' Mama's joke is dark, but it is also a compromise. What in the story tells you that Mama has found a way to protect Jay Berry WITHOUT keeping him a child?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide