Teachers’ Guide
Chasing the Moon
Penny Chamberlain
ISBN: 978-1-55039-157-2
5.25 X 7.75, 256 pages
AGES 8-13
$9.95
TO ORDER:
Sono Nis Press
1-800-370-5228
or visit
www.sononis.com
Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
Story Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Kit Avery hasn’t seen her father, Jack, in years. When Kit is forced
to stay with him after her mother falls ill with tuberculosis, she is dismayed to see
how far he’s let the farm slip since she and her mother left. The only improvements
are a new car and a sleek boat with a dock to match, down in the bay.
Jack doesn’t say much about how he earns his money, but it’s pretty obvious that
it isn’t by farming. Kit wants to believe he goes “night fishing,” but there’s not a
shred of evidence to support his story—not one fish scale, not even the smell of fish.
There’s something fishy going on, though. Kit’s father always seems to have plenty of
money, and he keeps a shiny new lock on the rickety barn door.
With her father keeping unpredictable hours, Kit is left to her own devices. After she
meets Caleb, a boy who has a troubled relationship with his own father, she must
decide where to place her trust and, ultimately, learn to trust herself.
As You Read
As you read Chasing the Moon, think about ways in which difficult circumstances
affect an individual’s capacity for resourcefulness.
Questions for Discussion
1. Chasing the Moon opens with Kit making her own way to her father’s house.
How does this foreshadow the nature of their relationship?
2. How does Kit’s relationship with her mother evolve over the course of the
novel?
3. The author describes several incidents that clearly indicate the troubled nature
of Kit’s parents’ marriage. Despite their differences, Kit longs for her parents to be
reunited. Do you think her parents will try to patch things up? Why, or why not?
4. How does the author create a sense of place in this novel?
5. Toward the end of the story, Kit wonders why it was any more dangerous for
her to go along on the rum-running expedition than it was for Caleb and her father.
Does this make Kit a modern thinker, ahead of her time?
Connecting Literature and Life
1. Government laws restricting access to alcohol created a strong market for illegally imported alcohol. How is the current movement of drugs across the Canada–
U.S. border the same as/different from the movement of alcohol during the 1920s?
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Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
2. How have children’s responsibilities within the family changed since the 1920s?
3. Kit has been warned to be careful about strangers while she is travelling from
Nanaimo to Victoria and then to her father’s farm on the Saanich Peninsula. If Kit
were making her first trip by herself today, what sorts of things would you warn her
about?
4. The Great Orsini is an example of a sideshow performer from the days of small
circuses and vaudeville theatres. Are there any modern equivalents to the Great Orsini? Have such things as reality TV shows and the Internet replaced the sideshow
as a way to satisfy our curiosity about strange phenomena and different people in
the world? Or will we always need magicians and fortune-tellers?
5. Prohibition, or the banning of alcohol, lasted until 1933 in the United States.
It has been blamed for helping to strengthen the crime underworld in the United
States. Think about the modern war on drugs. Do you think it is preventing people
from trying drugs? Or is it just putting money into criminals’ hands? How about
the battle against obesity? Do you think banning soft drinks and junk food in
schools will keep people from consuming these products? Can you see there being
a “sugar crime boss” providing sweet snacks to kids?
6. What role should government play in controlling the activities of members of the
public? Is acting in the best interests of citizens sufficient cause to restrict certain
freedoms? For example, is it repressive or protective to have seatbelt laws, speed
limits and restrictions on the availability of drugs, alcohol and gambling?
Writing Practice
Drugs and illegal immigrants are regularly smuggled across the border
into the United States. Do some research and write a newspaper-style
article about other smuggling activities that occur elsewhere in the world.
Plot
1. What purpose does the subplot involving Caleb play in this novel?
2. Identify three conflicts that directly affect Kit in the novel. Choose one and describe how this conflict is resolved.
3. “All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own
way.” So begins Anna Karenina, a novel by Leo Tolstoy. How does this quote
relate to the family in Chasing the Moon?
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Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
Writing Practice
Imagine you are a newspaper reporter covering the arrest of Roy
Olmstead. Write an article about this notorious rum-runner. Use
information from the novel, the afterword, other factual resources and
your imagination to create a believable account. Don’t forget to answer
the questions WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN? WHY? and HOW?
We are left at the end of the story knowing that Caleb and Kit like
each other, but that Caleb must leave to follow his own life. Write
another chapter to add to the end of Chasing the Moon. Will Kit
and Caleb find each other again? Will Kit’s parents get back together?
How about the rum-runners: will Kit’s father successfully keep from
working for them again? Will Kit become a traditional wife and mother,
or will she follow a different path?
Character
1. Describe three ways in which characters change over the course of the novel.
2. Choose a scene in which there is a lot of dialogue. Act the scene out. Add or
change dialogue to eliminate the need for any descriptive narrative.
3. Chasing the Moon is, by and large, realistic historical fiction. Why did the author
choose to include references to fortune-telling, dreams, water divination and premonitions? Why do you think the author chose to make Caleb the character most
closely aligned with these phenomena?
4. What does a character like Vivian add to the story? What does she reveal about
Jack? Kit?
5. Penny Chamberlain has infused her story with moral dilemmas for Kit. Should
Kit support her father, no matter what he does? Or should she try to get him to
change his ways and find a legal line of work? What about hiding Caleb on the
farm? Should Kit have let Caleb’s father know where he was?
6. How should Kit behave around Vivian? Is Vivian really care about Kit’s father,
or is she only looking after her own interests? Do you think it is realistic in 1924
for Kit, a 13-year-old girl, to stand up to an adult like Vivian?
Point of View
1. Chasing the Moon is written in the third person subjective point of view with
Kit Avery as the main point of view character. What are some of the advantages
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Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
of writing in the third person? Choose a scene in which Kit and another character
appear and rewrite the scene from the other character’s perspective. Use either the
first (“I”) or third person narrative form. Note how the story changes as the other
character reveals information, thoughts or feelings that Kit may not know about.
2. An unreliable narrator is one that the reader understands is not relating events
exactly the way they happened. When does Kit become an unreliable narrator?
Writing Practice
Toward the end of the novel Kit and her father receive letters from Kit’s
mother. Though the author has chosen to share the contents of the letter to
Kit, the reader does not know what is in the letter to Kit’s father. Write the
letter you think Kit’s mother wrote to her husband. Now, write his reply.
Setting
1. The geography of the west coast of British Columbia and Washington State is
important to the story told in Chasing the Moon. Find a map of the region and locate at least five places mentioned in the story. At least one of the locations should
be in the United States.
2. In what way does the setting affect the plot, characters and theme of the novel?
3. Time period is considered to be an aspect of the setting. At the start of the book,
the time period is not immediately identified. When did you first realize the story
was not set in modern-day (i.e., early twenty-first century) British Columbia?
Name at least ten things described by the author that help place the story sometime
in the 1920s to early 1930s.
Style
1. How would you describe Penny Chamberlain’s writing style?
2. What kinds of techniques does the author use to
• bring her characters to life?
• describe the setting?
• explore the underlying themes of the book?
Theme
1. Is it possible for an individual to truly change? Defend your position using three
examples from Chasing the Moon.
2. The end justifies the means. Do you agree with this statement? Support your
position in a brief essay that uses examples drawn from Chasing the Moon.
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Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
3. How does the ebb and flow of Kit’s hope (that her mother will recover, that her
parents will get back together) relate to her growth as a character?
4. Despite the historical facts of this story, there is a strong undercurrent of magic
in Chasing the Moon. Even though she is suspicious about Caleb’s sideshow magic
and fortune-telling, Kit herself has premonitions—visions of things that are going
to happen. Identify one or two examples of supernatural influences in this story. Do
you believe in second sight or water-witching? Are there some things that can’t be
explained with concrete scientific proof? Or will science eventually find explanations for all phenomena?
British Columbia History
Write a short biography on one of these historical figures:
• Jennie Butchart
• Roy Olmstead
• Johnny Schnarr
• Eric Sherbrooke Walker
Changing Times
1. Kit’s mother is a patient in a tuberculosis sanatorium that is closed to visitors.
Chasing the Moon also mentions one of the Gulf Islands that was formerly a leper
colony. Although it has been many decades since tuberculosis was a dreaded disease in our society, it is still around and continues to challenge medical knowledge.
Modern strains of tuberculosis threaten to become resistant to available medicines
and therapies. Do you think that tuberculosis sanatoriums will come back? If not
tuberculosis, what other disease or disorder may necessitate such drastic measures
as isolating the victims?
2. Set up a debate and present arguments for or against one of these statements:
Confining patients to sanatoriums is the best way to control infectious disease.
Confining patients to sanatoriums unreasonably restricts personal freedom.
About the Author
Penny Chamberlain loves history and reading, so it’s hardly surprising that her
novels explore stories of the past. Her dream is to write stories compelling enough
that young readers will become interested in the historical subjects that she finds so
fascinating.
Penny’s book Chasing the Moon is a story with origins in her childhood city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Penny recalls visiting the dock at the harbour with her
father, who pointed out some of the low-profile boats with big engines and lots of
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Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
storage space. “Those,” he would say, “were probably rum-running boats.” When Penny’s
mother was young, she knew a girl whose father was a rum-runner—the child always had
the nicest dresses and the most money.
The idea that rum-running was a major covert industry on Vancouver Island in the 1920s
and 1930s intrigued Penny. She was amazed that although there had been plenty of adventurous smugglers around only decades before, few had told their stories, choosing to
remain tight-lipped about their shady dealings. Many years after first hearing about the
smugglers, Penny, in her capacity as a physiotherapist at a Victoria hospital, met a rumrunner. After hearing his incredible tales of daring and adventure, she knew she had found
the subject for a new novel.
Penny loves entering the worlds she creates and immersing herself there for a time. This
desire to bring her characters and the places they inhabit to life shines through in each
carefully chosen detail and nuance of the scenes she crafts during her early morning writing sessions. Working full-time and caring for her family leaves little time for writing,
which is why it can take four or five years for Penny to write a new book.
Also by Penny Chamberlain
Olden Days Locket
Coming in 2010: Shack Island Summer
Websites
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www.sononis.com
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com: “Prohibition”
www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com/page219.htm
© Sono Nis Press 2009
Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
Just for Fun: Crossword Puzzle
Chasing the Moon
1
3
4
2
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Across
3. Person who predicts the future (answer includes
a hyphen)
6. Home for farm animals
7. A crescent ____
9. Soft green plant eaten by cows
10. Place to tie a boat
11. Another word for pie crust
15. People who sneak goods across the border
16. Illness that affects the lungs
17. Someone who performs tricks
18. Thieves who operate on water
19. Nanaimo is located on this land mass (2 words)
20. Vision of something that is about to happen
21. Special hospital for TB patients
Down
1. A wife is married to a _________
2. Location of Kit's father's farm (2 words)
4. Wood used for building
5. Type of alcohol smuggled in Chasing the Moon
8. Punch and Judy are _________
12. You wear these on your feet
13. The US state immediately south of British
Columbia
14. Organs responsible for breathing
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Chasing the Moon
Teachers’ Guide
Solution:
1
3
8
Chasing the Moon
H
F O R T U N E -
4
5
U
B
M
G R A S S
B
U
N
E
P A S T R Y
D
P
11
P
14
E
L
16
12
W
H
A
T U B E R C U L O S I
S
S
H
18
N
E
G
S
P I R A T E S
19
7
U
A
M O O N
I
10
D O C K
H
P
15
S M U G G L E R S
N
17
M A G I C I
I
G
P R E M O N I
21
T
A N
N
V A N C O U V E R I
20
S
B A R N
R
13
S
6
T E L L E R
S
9
2
S L A N D
U
I O N
L
O
A
S A N A T O R I U M
Across
3. Person who predicts the future (answer includes
a hyphen) [FORTUNE-TELLER]
6. Home for farm animals [BARN]
7. A crescent ____ [MOON]
9. Soft green plant eaten by cows [GRASS]
10. Place to tie a boat [DOCK]
11. Another word for pie crust [PASTRY]
15. People who sneak goods across the border
[SMUGGLERS]
16. Illness that affects the lungs [TUBERCULOSIS]
17. Someone who performs tricks [MAGICIAN]
18. Thieves who operate on water [PIRATES]
19. Nanaimo is located on this land mass (2 words)
[VANCOUVERISLAND]
20. Vision of something that is about to happen
[PREMONITION]
21. Special hospital for TB patients [SANATORIUM]
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Down
1. A wife is married to a _________ [HUSBAND]
2. Location of Kit's father's farm (2 words)
[SAANICHPENINSULA]
4. Wood used for building [LUMBER]
5. Type of alcohol smuggled in Chasing the Moon
[RUM]
8. Punch and Judy are _________ [PUPPETS]
12. You wear these on your feet [SHOES]
13. The US state immediately south of British
Columbia [WASHINGTON]
14. Organs responsible for breathing [LUNGS]
© Sono Nis Press 2009