BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSFifteen-year-old Kellen can unravel curses. He works out the reasons that wove a curse together and pulls its threads loose, a gift that began when he was a boy and a spider-like Little Brother from the Wilds bit his wrist. It comes with a side effect: woven cloth near him tends to fray, especially when he loses his temper, so he wears iron-studded gloves. He travels with Nettle, a watchful, unnervingly still girl he once freed from a curse that had turned her into a heron for three years, whose brother Yannick chose to stay a gull and comes and goes. After Kellen's temper lands them both in jail, a one-eyed marsh horseman named Gall offers them pay, protection and "supervision" from a mysterious employer if they will inspect the Red Hospital, where Raddith locks away its cursers. What they find there, a stranger sitting in the cell of a curser they helped catch, pulls them into a hunt for a secret league called Salvation, which is rumored to be gathering cursers, and into the dangerous marsh-woods of the Wilds.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Unraveller
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 Unraveller. 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 curser's prison cell turn out to hold a kidnapped tinker instead?
✓ Answer
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
Kellen peers into Jendy Pin's cell and knows at once the woman inside is not the wiry curser with the broken front tooth he helped catch. The prisoner is really a tinker from the lowlands, which means someone swapped Jendy out on purpose.
- First half
In what book does a sobbing marsh creature's wet black hair hold flower petals and dead dragonflies?
✓ Answer
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
When Pale Mallow drags Kellen out of the clearing, he finally sees her up close, with pearly grey-white skin, tear-streaked cheeks, and a green dress that clings to her like lichen. Her matted hair trails across his face as she pulls him toward the water.
- First half
In what book does a government assessor, turned into a bat, speak through a tiny painted cameo?
✓ Answer
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
Gall finally takes Kellen and Nettle to his employer, Assessor Leona Tharl, who has been a bat since about four o'clock that morning. She works the cameo by thought alone, having commissioned it from an artificer on one of the White Boats to keep in touch with Gall.
- Second half
In what book does a desperate father rap twice on the wall, summoning men with rope and sacks?
✓ Answer
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
The Master Pactwright invites Kellen and Nettle to examine his cursed daughter's room, but Salvation has promised to lift her curse if he hands the pair over. As the men pin her down, Nettle tries to warn him that Salvation couldn't lift its own curse even if it wanted to.
- Second half
In what book does a smiling stranger's "You have a gift?" confuse a dazed boy in a sunny glade?
✓ Answer
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
After the carriage crashes on its way into the Deep Wilds, Kellen wakes in a strangely bright glade where the Wilds folk expect the gift every traveler should bring. He nearly hands over the puzzle bottle, then offers the broken carriage and everything inside it, which the creatures leap on, tear apart, and carry off.
- Near the end
In what book is a hidden village of boats disguised with moss slabs and fake creepers made of cord?
✓ Answer
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
When Nettle is finally let out of her cabin, she sees Salvation's base, twenty or more boats nestled hull to hull in the reed-forest. Slabs of moss cover the barge roofs and black cords with green fabric leaves hang from the masts, so the whole camp blends into the marsh.
