BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTwelve-year-old Grace Forcier lives in a Franco-Canadian mill town in Vermont in 1910, where she is one of the best readers in her one-room schoolhouse and moves around the room to think better, driving her teacher Miss Lesley to distraction. When Arthur Trottier, the top student and Grace's desk neighbor, is pulled out of school by the mill's second hand to doff bobbins for his widowed mother, Grace talks herself out the door too and finds herself heading into the spinning room ahead of schedule, trading her education for two and a half dollars a week. What she doesn't know yet is that Miss Lesley has been quietly fighting back, and that a man with a camera and a notebook hidden in his vest pocket is about to walk into the mill and change everything.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Counting on Grace
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 Counting on Grace. 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 is a child hidden inside a hot cotton elevator whenever the state inspector comes through the door?
✓ Answer
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop
When French Johnny blows the whistle, the underage workers run to hide in the cotton elevator until the inspector leaves. One August day a couple of kids fainted in the heat before he opened the doors.
- First half
In what book does a grandfather try to hop on a moving train to ride home to Riviere du Loup?
✓ Answer
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop
Grace, home sick with a fever, unties the ropes holding Pepe to his bed so he can make her radish soup. While she digs in the garden he slips away and is killed trying to climb a moving train.
- First half
In what book does a stranger measure a girl's height against the buttons on his vest?
✓ Answer
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop
Lewis Hine tells Grace that her head reaches button number three on his vest, which means she is forty eight inches tall. Hine famously used this trick to confirm the true ages of underage mill workers.
- Second half
In what book does a boy unwrap his bandage at school to show his missing fingers to his teacher?
✓ Answer
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop
Arthur tells the teacher that the wound needs air, citing what he read in the soldier book. His hand is sealed with bright red, jagged stitching that horrifies both her and the narrator.
- Second half
In what book does a girl teach her mother the alphabet by pointing at letters on a kitchen stove?
✓ Answer
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop
Mamère is caught running her finger over the letters spelling ACME CHARM NEWARK STOVE WORKS. The narrator turns it into a daily game, making her mother her very first student.
- Near the end
In what book does a teacher get fired for inviting a photographer to document mill children?
✓ Answer
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop
Mr. Wilson and Mr. Dupree confront Miss Lesley in the schoolroom. Mr. Wilson fires her for bringing Lewis Hine and his camera into the mill, and she leaves to move in with her sister in North Adams.
