BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSRobbie Daniels is sixteen, finally old enough for a deckhand license, and tired of having no money. His family lives off the power grid in a floathouse that rides up and down with the tides at Port Protection, a place on Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska with no streets, no cars, and one store. To earn some cash he flies down to Craig and works the docks all day, hunting for a skipper who will take him on for the July king salmon season. Nobody is hiring. Then he sneaks aboard the Storm Petrel, a spotless forty-five-foot troller in the last slip, and gets caught holding something he was never meant to see, a heavy tarnished copper plate stamped with a two-headed eagle and writing in a strange alphabet. The furious old highliner who owns the boat, Tor Torsen, runs him off. Hours later Tor tracks him down and offers him the job. What follows is two weeks on the outside waters with a captain whose moods swing from generous to menacing, a secret worth more than a whole season of fish, and weather nobody aboard can outrun.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Leaving Protection
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 Leaving Protection. 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 family live in a house that rides up and down with the tides?
✓ Answer
Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs
The Daniels floathouse sits on huge logs and a hodgepodge of cables so it rises and falls with southeast Alaska's enormous tides. Robbie and his little sister Maddie were both born in it, and Robbie thinks it looks like something Dr. Seuss dreamed up.
- First half
In what book do little bells called tattletales ring when there are fish on the lines?
✓ Answer
Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs
Ropes run from the trolling poles down to bungee cords at the bow, and when a fish hits, the bungees jump and the bells ring. That is how a skipper keeps track of the fishing from inside the wheelhouse, where the poles are out of sight.
- First half
In what book does a sea chest's false bottom hide a journal telling where treasures are buried?
✓ Answer
Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs
An antique dealer buys a Russian chest for three hundred and fifty dollars, notices it is heavier than it looks, and finds an old journal from Russian America inside. Tor tells the story as if it happened to somebody he knows, then reveals with a grin that the dealer is him.
- Second half
In what book does a boy dig a green glass float bigger than a basketball from beach gravel?
✓ Answer
Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs
Robbie's ten year old sister Maddie asked him to keep an eye out for a glass fishing ball, and he stumbles on the beachcombing trophy of a lifetime wedged between two giant drift logs. That float ends up doing far more than decorate a shelf.
- Second half
In what book do two anchored trollers try to ride a giant wave out of a narrow bay?
✓ Answer
Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs
Tor fills in the part Robbie's book leaves out. Of the three boats anchored in Lituya Bay in 1958, the one deepest inside rode up on the swell and washed back safely, while the two that ran for the entrance were destroyed where the wave crested and broke.
- Near the end
In what book does the first storm wave hit a salmon troller "like a falling building"?
✓ Answer
Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs
Robbie barely gets braced at the wheelhouse table before the seas start landing on them. He is amazed the forward windows hold, and water forces its way in through every seam anyway.
