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Copywork
About This Passage
Selden describes the cricket's sound not by naming it but by reaching for three separate similes: a violin string, a plucked harp, and a falling leaf at midnight. Each comparison moves farther from the New York subway station until the sentence is far away in a dark forest. The passage teaches students how to write a description that ASKS the reader to imagine, and how an author can reach across great distances to define something very small.
It was like a quick stroke across the strings of a violin, or like a harp that has been plucked suddenly. If a leaf in a green forest far from New York had fallen at midnight through the darkness into...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, retell Chapter 2 from Mario's point of view. Where does Mario hear the sound? How does he find the cricket? What does he do to take care of him? What do his parents say? How is the argument resolved?
Discussion Questions
- Selden describes the cricket's sound with three different similes — a violin string, a plucked harp, and a leaf falling at midnight in a far-away forest. What does the chain of similes tell you about why this sound surprises Mario in the middle of a New York subway station?
- The text says that when Mario heard the sound, 'Whatever it was that was making the sound had heard him coming and was quiet.' What does this small sentence suggest about the kind of attention Mario and the cricket are paying to each other, even before they meet?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Pulled at a string or a small thing quickly with the fingers.
Item 2
A close, tangled group of small trees, bushes, or branches.
Item 3
The absence of light; a place where it is hard to see.
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Critical Thinking
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