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E. NesbitA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The children’s lives abruptly shift as their father leaves, their mother is preoccupied, and they move to the country. How would you judge the mother’s decision not to tell the children what is going on with their father?
Teaching Suggestion: Before introducing this discussion prompt, students could journal and discuss the extent to which they agree or disagree with this statement: Honesty is always the best policy. They could then apply their reasoning to this situation in the novel. The discussion can extend to include an analysis of how the question applies to the themes of The Nature of Justice or The Edwardian Ideals of Motherhood and Femininity. To give even the most reluctant speakers a voice, one strategy is a wrap-around at the end of the discussion. Each student considers their answer to the last question here: Did Mother lie? Then, wrapping around the class in a predetermined order, each student shares a 1-word answer: yes, no, or a qualifier like “somewhat” or “mostly.
By E. Nesbit