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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn Where Wolves Don't Die, fifteen-year-old Ezra Cloud is one of the few Native students at his school in Northeast Minneapolis, still working through his mother's death from leukemia about a year earlier while a classmate, Matt Schroeder, bullies him with racist taunts. When Ezra breaks his hand defending his best friend Nora George in a hallway confrontation, his father rushes him to the emergency room, and that same night the Schroeder house burns down with Matt's father and uncle inside. Matt survives and starts telling anyone who will listen that Ezra did it. With a police investigation opening and his family on edge, Ezra is sent north to Red Gut, the Ojibwe reservation on the Ontario side of Rainy Lake where his family is from, and then out to a remote trapping cabin at Chief's Ridge to spend the winter learning trapping from his grandfather, Liam Cloud. Between running the trapline, tracking a wolf pack led by an alpha named Ogimaa, and sorting out his feelings for Nora, Ezra tries to figure out who actually started the fire, all while working through a grief and an anger toward his father that he has not found words for yet.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Where Wolves Don't Die
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 Where Wolves Don't Die. 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 point with her lips toward a burned-down house?
✓ Answer
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer
Nora George drags Ezra down the alley to see what is left of the Schroeder place, and she gestures with her mouth instead of her hand. Pointing with the lips is an Ojibwe habit, and Ezra is charmed by it even standing at the edge of a crime scene.
- First half
In what book does a boy run into a burning house with a woolen blanket trailing like a cape?
✓ Answer
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer
Grandma Emma tells this story while she and Ezra chop vegetables for venison stew. She was fifteen the night her family's house burned with her ten year old sister Shawna still inside, and Liam, a neighbor boy then, came back out a window with Shawna over his shoulder.
- First half
In what book is one wall of a one-room trapping cabin covered floor to ceiling with bookshelves?
✓ Answer
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer
The cabin is eighteen feet by twenty with bunkbeds, a Drolet stove, and one rocking chair, and the biggest surprise is the library on the north wall. There are fantasy novels, books in French, and a whole run of titles in Ojibwe, which explains how a man who has spent his life in the woods knows the classics.
- Second half
In what book can a hunter not see his crosshairs against fur blacker than charcoal?
✓ Answer
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer
When the young bull steps onto the ice, Ezra shoulders the 7mm and finds that the black crosshairs vanish against the animal's winter coat. He has to track the moose with the scope until the angle changes before he can even aim.
- Second half
In what book does a boy tackle a trapped wolf in a wrestling hold to free its paw?
✓ Answer
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer
Ogimaa catches a front paw in a Conibear meant for fisher, and Byron says they might have to use the .22. Ezra refuses because the Clouds are wolf clan, then lunges and locks his arms and legs around the animal so his dad can spring the trap.
- Near the end
In what book does an old man rush outside in long johns and bare feet swinging a push broom?
✓ Answer
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer
Grandpa Liam hears the commotion and comes out of the cabin exactly as he was, with Buster right behind him, yelling at Ezra to drop the coat. The fisher snaps the broom handle in its teeth, which tells you how little the animal cares about size.
