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Copywork
About This Passage
Five sentences tracing the conversion of terror into strategy. Henry states what to avoid; Jess states where to go — their complementary leadership condensed into two lines of dialogue. Warner's final sentence uses 'definite' and 'better spirit' to demonstrate how intelligence transforms morale, modeling the relationship between information and courage — satisfies criteria B (varied sentence types from narrative to dialogue to summary), C (characterization through speech distribution), and D (the precise moment fear becomes determination).
It was some minutes before the children dared to creep out of the bushes again. 'One thing is sure,' said Henry, when he got his breath. 'We will not go to Townsend.' 'And we will go to Intervale,' sa...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary, then identify the single most important sentence or moment and explain why it matters to the book as a whole.
Discussion Questions
- Jess takes the bread crusts and tells the children 'crusts make you strong' — a statement that is simultaneously a lie and a truth. Examine the moral status of Jess's deception: does her selfless motive justify the falsehood, or does the fact that she cannot be honest about her own sacrifice reveal something troubling about the family's internal dynamics?
- The baker dismisses the possibility that children could walk to Intervale: 'they never could walk so far.' Examine what this casual underestimation reveals about the adult world's understanding of children in Warner's novel, and consider whether the author is making a claim about childhood capacity that extends beyond the Alden family.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
With gravity and weight; the adverb marking the moment Henry addresses five-year-old Benny as someone capable of understanding danger
Item 2
Characterized by deep forest growth; Warner's specific word for the road that promises concealment and leads the children away from human surveillance
Item 3
Producing sounds from age and wear; the baker's wagon betrays its approach through noise, giving the children seconds to hide
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Critical Thinking
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