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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage rewards close attention to syntax. Baum makes the sun and wind the grammatical subjects that act upon Aunt Em, using parallel clauses joined by a semicolon, they had taken the sparkle... they had taken the red, to enact a slow, cumulative draining. Copying it trains the hand in balanced construction and shows how sentence structure can carry meaning: the environment is the agent, and the person is what it changes.
When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from he...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what Baum most wants the reader to notice or feel before the adventure begins, and identify the techniques that create that effect.
Discussion Questions
- Baum opens not with action but with an extended, almost oppressive portrait of gray Kansas before anything happens. Why might he delay the first event to immerse us in that bleak setting, and how does that choice shape the way we enter the story? Use the chapter's images and structure to explain.
- Baum withholds the color gray from Toto alone, in a world where everything else has lost its color. What reading of Toto does this single exception invite, and why does the text both encourage and limit that reading? Use the chapter's details to explain.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Bent low or curved downward.
Item 2
Damaged a surface by making it crack and swell, as from harsh heat.
Item 3
Serious, strict, and severe in manner.
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Critical Thinking
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