Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What are the different structures a family can take? What makes a family a family? Develop a personal definition based on your own experiences and observations.

Teaching Suggestion: Students engaging with this open-ended question will begin to explore one of the novel’s central themes: Family: Ideal Versus Reality. The resources below might encourage students to discuss the more abstract ideas about family; they could be used to help generate ideas before answering the question, or they could be used to help students reflect on each other’s responses.

• This 2-minute YouTube video asks the question “What is family?” and includes responses from people of various backgrounds and ages.
• The first 10 minutes of this TED Talk focuses on expanding the definition of family to build better communities and a better world.

Differentiation Suggestion: For advanced learners, consider engaging directly with the notion of ideal versus reality with a graphic organizer, such as a T-chart, individually or as a class. On one side, students could describe what ideals people have about families and which media depictions fuel those ideals.