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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTwelve-year-old Khosrou, renamed Daniel after coming to America, stands up in front of Mrs. Miller's class in Edmond, Oklahoma, and begins telling stories the way Scheherazade told stories, buying himself one more day of belonging before someone decides he doesn't fit. He is Iranian, a refugee, the kid with the strange lunch and the accent and the fading Persian, and the only weapon he has is the truth of where he came from. Through fragments of family myth, memories of life in Tehran, and the long road through Dubai and an Italian refugee camp, he pieces together how his mother's faith upended everything and how the losses that followed, the father left behind, the country left behind, the earlier self left behind, are not the end of the story but the middle of one that isn't finished yet. It is a book about what it costs to survive, what survives along with you, and why the painful parts of a true story might also be the most important parts to tell.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Everything Sad Is Untrue
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 Everything Sad Is Untrue. 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 kid put car battery cables on his own tongue and split it in half?
✓ Answer
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Tanner uses jumper cables to fry cockroaches in a drainage ditch behind the apartments, then puts the prongs to his own tongue. He drops to his knees with blood pouring out and a chunk of his tongue on the ground. He returns months later with a forked tongue.
- First half
In what book does a grandmother fall in love with a librarian in a tower carved from rock?
✓ Answer
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Daniel imagines that his grandmother Ellie's lover was Kaveh the librarian of Kandovan. They sit eating pages from books filled with fruit leather, talking poetry. The narrator admits he made the librarian up.
- First half
In what book does a peeing boy watch a luxury shop's staff scramble to save the luggage?
✓ Answer
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
While his dad shops for new suitcases in London after destroying the first set, Khosrou says 'yeth pleeth' to attendant Gert and accepts a peanut butter cookie. Then he pees, and the river chases the rolling bags around the marble floor.
- Second half
In what book is a guest served chicken stewed in pomegranate and walnuts and complains it "smells like poop"?
✓ Answer
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Khosrou's mom makes fesenjoon for his birthday party guest Kyle, who only eats chicken tenders and rejects the brown stew on sight. She ends up running to the gas station for a box of macaroni and cheese.
- Second half
In what book does a sobbing boy run into a secret church meeting with a chickpea stuck up his nose?
✓ Answer
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Khosrou had been shooting roasted chickpeas out of his nose when one got lodged. He bursts into the underground gathering bleeding, terrifying the worshippers who think the secret police have come for them.
- Near the end
In what book do a seventeen-year-old refugee and a seven-year-old climb fences to steal peaches from Italian orchards?
✓ Answer
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Ali Shekari teaches the narrator how to jump fences, climb trees, and run zigzag from farmers shooting in the air. The two are peach thieves on the hills around Hotel Barba, and the narrator remembers it as an adventure.
