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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSFourteen-year-old Lily Owens has grown up on a peach farm in South Carolina with only fragmented, painful memories of her mother Deborah, who died in a household accident when Lily was four — an accident Lily fears she may have caused. The summer of 1964, Lily lives under the cold authority of her father T. Ray, her only real company the family's housekeeper Rosaleen. When Rosaleen is arrested and beaten after standing up to a group of racist men on the way to register to vote, Lily breaks her out of the hospital and the two of them flee toward Tiburon, a small South Carolina town whose name Lily found written on the back of a Black Madonna picture she discovered among her mother's few belongings.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Secret Life of Bees
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 Secret Life of Bees. 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 black woman pour snuff juice over three white men's shoes?
✓ Answer
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
On Lily's fourteenth birthday in 1964, Rosaleen walks to town to register and dumps her tobacco spit on the shoes of three racists outside the Esso station. The confrontation gets her beaten and jailed.
- First half
In what book do three black sisters named for calendar months take in a white runaway?
✓ Answer
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
August, June, and May Boatwright share names from a calendar, picked by their mother who loved warm seasons. They welcome Lily and Rosaleen into their pink house in Tiburon.
- First half
In what book does a dark-skinned Madonna label appear on every jar a black family sells?
✓ Answer
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
August's product carries an image of the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia. The label is what draws Lily to August, since it matches her mother's tiny wooden picture exactly.
- Second half
In what book does a teenage boy in jail ask a white girl, "Are you writing in your notebook?"
✓ Answer
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
When Lily visits Zach in the Tiburon cell, his desperate parting question is whether she is still writing. Lily promises to put his hurt into a story so it matters.
- Second half
In what book does an older woman tell the story of Aristaeus and the bull's carcass?
✓ Answer
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
August retells the Greek myth of Aristaeus, who sacrificed a bull and returned nine days later to find a swarm flying from its carcass. The story explains the belief that the colonies have power over death.
- Near the end
In what book does a girl find a long, black, wavy hair threaded through her dead mother's hairbrush?
✓ Answer
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
From a hatbox, August produces Deborah's wooden hairbrush, and Lily spots a single dark hair still in the bristles. She realizes no amount of throwing jars can make her mother disappear from her tender places.
