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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSVera, who tells this story in short poems, is part Aleut. Her father was a white man who went to sea and never came home, and she lives in Unalaska village, helping an elderly couple named Alexie and Fekla Golodoff. She has gone to the small village of Kashega for the summer to see her mother, who greets her like a stranger, and her best friends, Pari and Alfred. Then, in June, the Japanese attack from the sky. The military sends Vera away with the Kashega people instead of letting her return to the Golodoffs, and families from five Aleut villages are shipped far from their islands. After a first stop at the Wrangell Institute, they end up at Ward Lake, a camp in a dripping Southeast Alaska rain forest where no one can see open water. For people from treeless islands, the endless trees feel smothering, and there is little food and no doctor. While the villagers build cabins, hold dances, keep telling their old stories, and wait for permission to go home, Vera's friendship with Alfred starts to change.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Aleutian Sparrow
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Aleutian Sparrow. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does an evacuee play Debussy on an upright piano in a school parlor?
✓ Answer
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
Innokenty, from Akutan, plays for dozens of evacuees gathered in the parlor of Wrangell Institute. With their eyes closed, the listeners feel as if they are sailing home on a rippling sea.
- First half
In what book do girls search a rain forest for wormwood but recognize not one leaf?
✓ Answer
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
The men are sore from building cabins, so Alfred's mother sends the girls into the woods to find wormwood. But there is too much green, and nothing in this strange forest looks like the plants from home.
- First half
In what book does a taxi smell of old leather, tobacco, and wintergreen?
✓ Answer
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
Vera, Pari, and Vera's mother ride shoulder to shoulder in Mr. Wacker's taxi on a day trip to Ketchikan. The road runs along the channel, where eagles fly and a bush plane roars overhead, and Vera's spirit rises with the sun.
- Second half
In what book does a girl remember pretending blue lupine blossoms were bumblebee houses?
✓ Answer
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
As Alfred walks Vera to work along the channel, she reminds him of a game she and Pari played back in Kashega, pretending the lupine flowers were homes for bumblebees. Alfred laughs, remembering their old games and old ways.
- Second half
In what book do villagers dig clams by moonlight in December, wearing every piece of donated clothing?
✓ Answer
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
Bundled in layers of donated clothes, the Ward Lake families march through the snowy forest to the beach with empty sacks and makeshift shovels and rakes. As they dig, they act out the ancient clam digger story, their shadows rising and falling in the moonlight.
- Near the end
In what book does everyone, even the babies, kiss the holy picture after nearly three hours of chanting?
✓ Answer
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
For Russian Orthodox Christmas, the villagers carry the sick into their unheated camp church, which is decorated with a hundred paper flowers made in the kitchen. The chanting goes on for nearly three hours, and at the end every person presses their lips to the holy picture.
