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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the chapter's most famous descriptive paragraph — the fully-uniformed Bearded Dog, Fido. Collodi piles up costume detail (livery, gold lace, brilliants, crimson velvet) until the dog is no longer just a dog but a complete character. Copying it teaches you how a writer builds a single image out of many small particulars. The passage contains the vocabulary words trimmed, livery, brilliants, crimson, and velvet — a cluster that lets you see the words working together rather than alone.
He had a cap trimmed with gold lace and a white curly wig that came down to his neck. He wore a dress coat of chocolate color, with buttons of brilliants and two big pockets to hold bones. He had a pa...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 16 in seven or eight sentences. Begin with the Blue-Haired Baby clapping her hands at the window. Include the Falcon's quick rescue, the elaborate carriage with one hundred pairs of mice, the three doctors and their circular contradictions, and end with the Cricket's accusation that Pinocchio is killing his poor papa, and Pinocchio's sobs giving him away.
Discussion Questions
- What in the story shows you that Collodi has shifted from the gothic-fairy tone of Chapter 15 to a comic-fairy tone in Chapter 16? How do you know the change is meant to be felt as relief, not a betrayal of the seriousness of the hanging?
- Pinocchio is rescued by a Falcon, carried in a carriage, laid on a bed of mother-of-pearl, and examined by three doctors — he is the most passive he has been in the book so far. What in the chapter makes you think Collodi is using stillness on purpose? How can you tell being unable to act is part of his recovery, not just a pause in it?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
kind and dignified at the same time; treating others with warm courtesy
Item 2
deep respect mixed with awe, the way one might bow to a king or a holy thing
Item 3
a puppet whose body is moved by strings from above
+ 7 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
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