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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn 2000, author Wes Moore was finishing his senior year at Johns Hopkins and preparing to leave for Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar when he read a Baltimore Sun story about a man with his exact name who had been arrested for murdering a police officer during a jewelry store robbery. Both Wes Moores grew up in Baltimore at the same time, in similarly broken circumstances, without fathers, in neighborhoods where drugs and violence closed in from every direction. That coincidence burrowed into the author until, years later, he wrote a letter to a stranger at the Jessup Correctional Institution, and that stranger wrote back. The book that grew from their correspondence asks a question that has no clean answer: what made the difference between one life and the other?
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
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 The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. 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 prisoner reply to a writer's first letter with the greeting "Greetings, Good Brother"?
✓ Answer
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
After the author writes a letter introducing himself, he is surprised a month later to receive an envelope postmarked from Jessup. The reply begins 'Greetings, Good Brother,' and launches a years-long correspondence.
- First half
In what book does a mother flush over four thousand dollars worth of her son's drugs down the toilet?
✓ Answer
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
Mary empties the shoe boxes into the toilet and flushes again and again until the water runs clear. When her son comes home and finds the boxes empty, he is panicked about owing his supplier.
- First half
In what book does a young Bronx graffiti tagger go by the alter ego "Kid Kupid"?
✓ Answer
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
The narrator adopts a tag of connected Ks inside a circle, standing for Kid Kupid, an alter ego advertising his largely imaginary prowess with girls. He sprays it across the Bronx.
- Second half
In what book does an exhausted plebe get one rule-bending five-minute phone call to beg his mother for rescue?
✓ Answer
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
Colonel Batt bends plebe system rules and lets the new cadet call home from his office. The mother refuses to bring him back, telling him too many people have sacrificed for him to be there.
- Second half
In what book does a dealer realize a buyer is a cop by his smooth hands and clean nails?
✓ Answer
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
Wes drops two dime bags of crack into a phone booth's coin return for a buyer who asks for "rocks." When he takes the twenty dollars and their hands touch, he notices the man's smooth hands and clean nails, and a ten-officer sting closes in moments later.
- Near the end
In what book does a young father in carpentry class decide to build a real wooden house for his daughter?
✓ Answer
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
In carpentry class at the Woodland Job Corps Center in Laurel, Wes tunes out classmates building plaques and small boxes. He decides to build a full house, five feet high with shutters, door, and windows, big enough for his five-year-old daughter to climb inside.
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