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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSAlone, by Megan E. Freeman, is a novel told entirely in short verse. Twelve-year-old Maddie splits her time between her divorced parents in the small town of Millerville, Colorado. Her mom has remarried and had a baby, her dad has remarried too, and Maddie mostly just wants a weekend away from all of it with her friends Emma and Ashanti. When their planned sleepover falls through at the last minute, Maddie ends up spending the night alone in her grandparents' empty apartment anyway, having told each of her parents she is with the other. She wakes up the next morning to a phone full of panicked voicemails and a text alert about an "imminent threat" that triggered a citywide evacuation overnight. Riding through town to find her family, she discovers streets, houses, and stores standing completely empty and silent, with no one in sight except George, the neighbors' rottweiler, left behind in an empty house. A reader who likes survival stories and slow-building mysteries will want to know exactly what Maddie is going to do next.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Alone
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 Alone. 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 a girl flush a toilet by dumping a bucket of red wine into it?
✓ Answer
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
With the power out and the taps dry, Maddie refuses to waste drinking water on the toilet, so she raids the case of wine in her mother's basement. She says the sound of the flush is like music.
- First half
In what book does a girl cut off her long braid with scissors and hide it away?
✓ Answer
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
On her thirteenth birthday Maddie decides childhood is over and chops her hair into short spikes. She wraps the heavy braid in her mother's silk scarf and tucks it into the vanity, out of sight.
- First half
In what book does a girl train a squirrel to eat sunflower seeds from her palm?
✓ Answer
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
All winter Maddie brushes the snow off the porch and lays a row of seeds a little closer to where she sits. Winning the squirrel's trust becomes one of the small victories that keeps her going through the cold months.
- Second half
In what book does the sky turn the color of guacamole as a tornado touches down?
✓ Answer
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
Maddie is up on the unfinished second floor of a house frame when a thin gray finger drops out of the clouds. She and her dog have to sprint through hail toward the only completed house on the street.
- Second half
In what book does a girl find her young brother's book report under a cabinet?
✓ Answer
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
Checking her mother's empty house in winter, Maddie spots a page of nine year old Elliott's homework that nobody ever picked up. Reading his handwriting wrecks her, and his argument about what makes survival truly hard becomes the idea she measures herself against for the rest of the story.
- Near the end
In what book does a girl make a scarecrow from an upside-down rake?
✓ Answer
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
Maddie clears her grandfather's overgrown garden plot, labels the rows with Popsicle sticks, and hauls water up from the lake by hand. The birds completely ignore her scarecrow, but it scares her dog.
