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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn 1723, a seventeen-year-old runaway named Ben Franklin steps off a boat in Philadelphia with almost no money and no one who knows him. He buys three puffy rolls for breakfast, eats one, and walks up Market Street with a roll under each arm, not knowing that a girl watching from a doorway named Deborah Read will later become his wife. He had just walked away from Boston and a punishing nine-year apprenticeship to his older brother James, a printer who beat him and refused to treat him as anything but a servant. Becoming Ben Franklin follows this broke, hungry teenager as he builds a life for himself in a new city, using nothing but his wits, his printing skills, and a stubborn habit of teaching himself whatever he needs to know.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty
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 Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty. 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 boy walk off "with a roll under each arm, and eating the other"?
✓ Answer
Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman
Franklin told this story himself years later, explaining that his pockets were already stuffed with shirts and stockings so there was no room for bread. He handed the two spare rolls to a woman and her child he had met on the boat.
- First half
In what book does a man press his knuckle to a key and feel an unmistakable shock?
✓ Answer
Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman
On a June day in 1752 in a lonely field, nothing happened at first, and then the storm answered. That spark settled the question of whether lightning was electricity and made him famous across Europe.
- First half
In what book does an inventor mount thirty-seven glass bowls on a spinning wheel to make music?
✓ Answer
Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman
The glass armonica grew out of the party trick of rubbing a wet finger around a wineglass rim. It became so popular that Mozart and Beethoven wrote music for it and Marie Antoinette took lessons on it.
- Second half
In what book does a man stand silent for nearly an hour in a room once used for cockfights?
✓ Answer
Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman
The Cockpit was a Privy Council room in London where cockfights had been held back in the days of Henry VIII. A government prosecutor abused Franklin for almost an hour while a packed crowd laughed and jeered, and he never let a hint of emotion show on his face.
- Second half
In what book is a sixty-nine-year-old by far the oldest member of a new congress?
✓ Answer
Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman
The day after he landed back in Philadelphia in 1775, Franklin was elected a Pennsylvania delegate to the Second Continental Congress. He sat on committees starting at six in the morning and told a friend his time had never been more fully employed.
- Near the end
In what book does a man design a long pole with pincers to pluck books off high shelves?
✓ Answer
Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman
Back home in Philadelphia in his late seventies, Franklin added a library wing with floor to ceiling shelves for four thousand books. He was especially proud of this mechanical arm, which could grab a book from an upper shelf and put it back again.
