BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTurtle is eleven years old and used to taking care of herself. It's 1935, money is tight everywhere, and when her mother takes a housekeeping job for a woman who won't allow children in the house, Turtle gets sent to Key West, Florida, to live with relatives she has never met. She pictures swaying palm trees and easy days, but what she finds is a run-down house on Curry Lane crowded with rowdy boy cousins, including Beans, Kermit, and Buddy, who run a business called the Diaper Gang and refuse to let a girl join. Turtle has a sharp tongue, a soft spot for her scarred cat Smokey, and no patience at all for Shirley Temple movies, but as she meets the sponge fisherman Slow Poke, the rumrunner Johnny Cakes, and a grandmother she didn't even know was alive, she starts to wonder what this strange island actually has in store for her.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Turtle in Paradise
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 Turtle in Paradise. 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 girl swear her nickel is at the bottom of her ice cream can?
✓ Answer
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Jimmy the ice cream man refuses to spot Beans another scoop, but the new girl talks her way into a free helping of sugar apple by claiming she will have to eat her way down to the coin. It proves her point that charm only gets you so far without smarts, though Jimmy warns the trick only works once.
- First half
In what book do spongers pour shark oil on the water to see the bottom better?
✓ Answer
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Slow Poke smooths the surface with oil, peers through a glass-bottomed bucket, then hooks each sponge with a long pine pole. The narrator helps by spotting them, and he tells her she is a born Conch.
- First half
In what book do boys scrape a rock on a string across windows to sound like a ghost?
✓ Answer
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Ira brings the tick-tocking trick home from Miami, and the boys try it on folks they think have wronged them, starting with their teacher Miss Sugarapple. The prank spirals until the newspaper asks whether a weeping ghost is haunting Key West.
- Second half
In what book does a wife answer a question about a crying baby with "You haven't been gone that long"?
✓ Answer
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Uncle Vernon comes walking down Curry Lane after weeks away and sees a strange baby howling in the wagon, so he asks if that one is theirs too. Aunt Minnie's dry comeback makes everybody laugh and shows the warmth hiding under her sharp tongue.
- Second half
In what book does a cat crash through the rotting top of a piano and get stuck?
✓ Answer
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Smokey has been living at Nana Philly's house, and one afternoon she falls right through the termite-eaten piano and meows until Turtle pulls her out. That accident is what leads Turtle to peer inside the piano and find what has been hidden there for years.
- Near the end
In what book does a girl imagine winning a movie award for being stranded with a bunch of boys?
✓ Answer
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Hungry and soaked after the storm, she falls asleep and imagines a man onstage opening the envelope and calling her name while America's Little Darling sits beside her wearing far too much lipstick. Even in her dreams she cannot resist getting one over on the child star she claims to hate.
