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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn Victorian London, Nan Sparrow climbs up inside chimneys to brush them clean for a cruel master sweep named Wilkie Crudd. Five years ago, the Sweep, the kind man who raised her, vanished from a rooftop in the night, leaving behind his top hat with a warm lump of soot inside that Nan calls her char. Now nearly twelve, Nan gets stuck in a chimney at a fancy girls' school, and her rival, Roger, lights a fire beneath her. She wakes up without a single burn to find that her char has come alive as a small, curious creature she names Charlie. Hiding from Crudd in an empty mansion, Nan raises Charlie as he grows, makes friends with Toby, a boy who digs for treasure in the Thames mud, and with a kind teacher named Miss Bloom, and begins to learn that Charlie may be a golem, a creature from old Jewish stories made to protect people.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster
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 Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster. 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 riddle on a classroom board get solved with "I am . . . an egg"?
✓ Answer
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
Covered in soot, Nan reads the riddle Miss Bloom has written on the blackboard and answers it before marching off to work in the hearth. Miss Bloom is astonished that a climber can read, and slowly she begins to smile.
- First half
In what book does a creature build himself a body with legs of different sizes and three fingers per hand?
✓ Answer
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
After a week alone in the cellar with piles of soot and buckets of water, Charlie shows Nan the body he made himself, larger than her, with no neck and lumpy fingers. He worries she won't like it, but Nan hugs him and tells him he's perfect.
- First half
In what book do folks call a smelly river the Queen's Chamber Pot?
✓ Answer
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
Nan walks along the banks of the Thames at low tide to find Toby, and the river there smells terrible. Folks call it the Queen's Chamber Pot, and most days she would gladly walk ten blocks out of her way to avoid the smell.
- Second half
In what book does a man mending a child's coat claim his magic needle pulls thread from the air?
✓ Answer
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
In a memory from when Nan was little, the Sweep mends a hole in her coat on a rooftop. He tells her it's a magic needle that draws the thread from the air, and bites the string off with his good tooth.
- Second half
In what book do a creature's glowing hands hatch a crushed egg into a chick with one twisted wing?
✓ Answer
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
Charlie accidentally breaks the robin's egg in the Nothing Room and sobs over it. As he holds it, his hands glow red and then white, and soon a tiny chick pecks its way out, alive but with one wing that won't open right.
- Near the end
In what book does a boy pay for cream ices with flowers swiped from cemetery graves?
✓ Answer
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
Toby takes Nan to meet the Queen of Ices at her stall by Charing Cross Station. Instead of coins he hands over an enormous bouquet that Nan suspects came from the graves at St. John's Wood cemetery, and Toby just laughs that no one will miss them.
