Mockingbird

Chapters 1-8

Reading Check

1. Caitlin runs her fingers along the underside of Mrs. Brook’s desk and gets a splinter in her finger. She bleeds profusely and panics at the sight of blood. (Chapter 3)

2. The heart (Chapter 7)

3. Caitlin names her dictionary, the television, and her computer. (Chapter 7)

Short-Answer Response

1. Literally, the gray is the weather outside, but the gray that Caitlin feels inside refers more to her grief over her brother’s death and her uncertainty about how to handle it. (Chapter 1)

2.Caitlin is referring to Devon’s cremation; she understands that although his body is gone his ashes might still be floating about in the air. Her answer, however, reflects her unwillingness to let go of her brother. (Chapter 3)

3. Caitlin doesn’t understand the teacher’s remark that she “wants” Caitlin to work with a group; she takes it as a simple statement about the teacher’s feelings rather than a request, and she sees no reason why it should matter more than her own feelings. More broadly, she’s uncomfortable working with other students, partly because they’ve told her to leave them alone in the past. (Chapter 7)

4. Caitlin’s father cannot control his sadness and his sense of loss. Unable to understand the depth of his heartache (he has lost his young wife and now his only son), Caitlin often inadvertently makes comments that trigger intense grief. (Multiple chapters)

Chapters 9-15

Reading Check

1. Caitlin dislikes the noise, the confusion, and the massive violations of her personal space by kids running around playing games. (Chapter 9)

2. “Closure” (Chapter 11)

3. Bambi (1942) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) (Chapter 8; Chapter 13)

Short-Answer Response

1. Caitlin has trouble making friends, but when she meets Michael, a first grader, they immediately hit it off. Her offer of a gummy worm is a sign of Caitlin’s sudden interest in bonding with a kid who might be a friend. (Chapter 10)

2. Friends demand complexity. They are not predictable or controllable and tend to act in ways that Caitlin does not get. They seem to be nice, but she senses sometimes they are making fun of her. Thus, friends cannot fit easily into Caitlin’s black-and-white understanding of the world. (Multiple chapters)

Chapters 16-21

Reading Check

1. Mrs. Brook tells Caitlin that Michael is the son of the teacher who was killed in the same shooting as Devon. (Chapter 17)

2. Caitlin’s picture depicts Devon’s face, but the features are all floating apart from each other. (Chapter 18)

3. “Empathy” (Chapter 19)

hort-Answer Response

1. Caitlin is still trying to understand how Devon can be gone so completely and so absolutely. When her father asks what she wants for her birthday, she answers honestly, saying she wishes she could go to the mall with her brother. (Chapter 16)

2. Caitlin sees as is a villain because she has seen him bullying kids. When Michael befriends Josh because of the reading program, Caitlin cannot understand why anyone would be nice to someone “evil” and gets angry. (Chapter 18)

3. Caitlin, hoping to make a friend, is honest about Rachel’s bike-riding injuries and tells her that her face is a mess. She then moves Rachel’s desk to the corner, figuring that with her back to the class, no one would see her face and make her self-conscious. The idea backfires and the other girls scold Caitlin for being so insensitive. (Chapter 19)

Chapters 22-31

Reading Check

1. He is the art teacher at the fundraiser who is much taken by Caitlin’s talent for drawing. (Chapter 22)

2. Finishing Devon’s Eagle Scout project, a Mission-style cabinet (Chapter 24)

3. When her father declines to help her finish Devon’s cabinet, Caitlin tries to do it on her own, mistaking her father’s woodworking instructions to use quarter cut oak as referring to oak cut with a quarter. (Chapters 26-27)

Short-Answer Response

1.     Caitlin cannot draw Mr. Walters’s eyes because she sees both happiness and sadness in them. That mixture of emotions violates her idea that faces should be easy to decode. Mr. Walters confirms her perceptiveness: He is happy to meet her but sad over the school shootings. (Chapter 22)

2. Caitlin’s refusal to seek the easy escape of a private school shows that she is ready to accept the challenge of making friends. (Chapter 23)

3. Caitlin’s father is not ready to return to his son’s Eagle Scout project, and when Caitlin persists in asking him about it, he walks away from her in grief and frustration. (Chapter 25)

Chapters 32-39

Reading Check

1. Caitlin provides the illustrations, executing beautiful drawings of the dogwood (the state flower and tree) and the cardinal (the state bird). (Chapter 33)

2. The Mission-style chest (Chapter 39)

3. A new sketchpad and a boxful of colorful crayons (Chapter 39)

Short-Answer Response

1. At the moment when Caitlin is most certain that her life is exactly like the world of To Kill a Mockingbird, her father gently reminds her that life is not a movie and that there is much more to life than any movie could have. It is his way of encouraging Caitlin to be more open to the real world and its joys and sorrow. (Chapter 34)

2. Caitlin begins crying when she thinks about her brother and all that he will never be able to do, but she starts laughing when she realizes that she is crying for her brother rather than for herself; it’s the first time the concept of what empathy is has clicked for her. (Chapter 38)

3. Caitlin’s charcoal sketches reflect her preference to live in her own private world of simplifications and certainties. Using color indicates that she is ready to begin to embrace the difficult, contradictory world beyond her control. This marks the end of her childhood. (Chapter 39)