Chasing Redbird (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

by Sharon Creech

Overview

In an attempt to find some peace from her noisy siblings, Zinny heads to the woods, but while she is cleaning up the path in the woods behind her house, she uncovers special family treasures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780613065368
Publisher:	Perfection Learning Corporation
Publication date:	04/04/2019
Edition description:	THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.56(h) x 0.56(d)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Sharon Creech is the author of the Newbery Medal winner Walk Two Moons and the Newbery Honor Book The Wanderer. Her other work includes the novels Hate That Cat, The Castle Corona, Replay, Heartbeat, Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, Ruby Holler, Love That Dog, Bloomability, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Chasing Redbird, and Pleasing the Ghost, as well as three picture books: A Fine, Fine School; Fishing in the Air; and Who's That Baby? Ms. Creech and her husband live in upstate New York.

Hometown:

Pennington, New Jersey

Date of Birth:

July 29, 1945

Place of Birth:

Cleveland, Ohio

Education:

B.A., Hiram College, 1967; M.A., George Mason University, 1978

Read an Excerpt

Chasing Redbird

Chapter One

Tangled Spaghetti

Worms dangled in Aunt Jessie's kitchen: red worms swarming over a lump of brown mud in a bowl. The bowl and the worms and the lump of mud were in a cross-stitched picture hanging above the stove.

When I learned to read, I made out these words in blue letters beneath the bowl: Life is a bowl of spaghetti ... Those worms weren't worms; they were spaghetti. I imagined myself rummaging among the twisted strands of pasta. That was my life?

There were more words: ... every now and then you get a meatball. That mud was a meatball! I saw that meatball as a tremendous bonus you might unearth in all those convoluted spaghetti strands of your life. It was something to look forward to, a reward for all that slogging through your pasta.

In my thirteen years, I've had meatballs, and I've had lumps of mud, too.

My name is Zinny (for Zinnia) Taylor. I live with a slew of brothers and sisters and my parents on a farm in Bybanks, Kentucky. Our house fits snug up against Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie's, the two houses yoked together like one. Sometimes it seems too crowded on our side, and you don't know who you are. You feel like everybody's spaghetti is all tangled in one pot.

Last spring I discovered a trail at the back of our property -- an old trail, overgrown with grass and weeds. I knew instantly that it was mine and mine alone. What I didn't know was how long it was or how hard it would be to uncover the whole thing, or that it would turn into such an obsession, that I'd be as driven as a chickeneating dog in a henhouse.

This trail was just like thespaghetti of me and my family, of Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie, and of Jake Boone. It took a heap of doing to untangle it.

Chasing Redbird. Copyright © by Sharon Creech. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Chasing Redbird is a complex and exciting work of fiction that explores real issues teenagers are dealing with, including death, identity, and relationships. Thirteen-year-old Zinny Taylor lives in Bybanks, Kentucky, with too many brothers and sisters--a mess of "tadpoles" and "pumpkins" is what her uncle Nate calls them. When Zinny discovers a mysterious overgrown trail that begins on her family farm, she thinks she's finally found a place of her own, a place she can go, away from her family, to hear herself think. But what Zinny comes to realize is that the mysteries of the trail are intertwined with her own unanswered questions and family secrets, and that the trail and her passion to uncover it is leading her on a journey home.

Interweaving the story with places and characters from her Newbery Award-winning novel Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech tells a beautifully crafted story about a young girl discovering that life is a tangle of mysteries, surprises, and everyday occurrences a journey that often needs unraveling and that sometimes must be traveled alone.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Throughout Chasing Redbird, Zinny experiences conflicting and confusing feelings about the people who are special to her—-Uncle Nate, Jake, even her parents. Give some examples of Zinny's confusion about these characters and explain why she feels so conflicted.
   
   
2. How does the natural world of the woods play a part in Zinny's story? Do the other members of Zinny's family share her enthusiasm for nature?
   
   
3. Throughout the novel Zinny continuallyexplains her life as a "bowl of spaghetti" (p.1). Discuss this metaphor and how it works within the story.
   
   
4. Why do you think Jake steals the dog, the ring, and the car? Is it all because he's "sweet on" (p.100) Zinny, or are there other reasons for his stealing? From the clues that Sharon Creech gives you about Jake's life, what kind of relationship do you think Jake has with his parents? Does he share the kind of closeness Zinny has with her parents?
   
   
5. There are many supernatural events in Chasing Redbird. Does the ghost of Aunt Jessie actually wander through the woods? What kinds of emotions does Zinny feel every time she senses Aunt Jessie's ghost?
   
   
6. Zinny gets upset when her father refers to her mission to clear the trail as "the trail thing" (p.119). Have you ever had the experience of someone's underestimating or belittling a project about which you felt very strongly? How did you feel when this happened?
   
   
7. Constantly being referred to as an anonymous "pumpkin," a "tadpole," or worst of all, the "strangest and stingiest dirt-daubing doodlebug" (p. 52), Zinny strikes out to clear the trail. By the end of the novel, do you think Zinny has successfully set herself apart from her brothers and sisters by creating the trail? Has her identity changed in the eyes of her family, the public, Jake? Does Zinny think she has changed herself by the end of the story? How can you tell?
   
   
8. Zinny often talks about missing her friend Sal, who is the main character in Walk Two Moons. For those who have read Walk Two Moons: How is Zinny's mission to clear the trail similar to Sal's race to retrace her mother's steps? Compare how these two main characters deal with the losses in their lives.
   
   
9. Both Zinny's cousin Rose and Aunt Jessie fall to untimely deaths and throughout the novel Zinny feels much guilt about the loss. Consider this quote from Zinny: "Why did people get old? Why did people get sick? Why couldn't the hand of God fix whooping cough? Why couldn't it snatch a woman back from a drawer? Why couldn't it fix Uncle Nate? I couldn't stand it. I wanted answers to my questions, and I wanted them immediately" (p.179). How does this quote help explain Zinny's feelings about her aunt's and cousin's deaths?
   
   
10. How do you react to Zinny's behavior in the shocking and powerful scene in which she places a pillow over Uncle Nate's head? Reread p.197 as you discuss.
    
    
11. Sharon Creech spends a good deal of time describing the different portions of the Bybanks-Chocton trail. Discuss the interesting names of these trails—Maiden's Walk, Baby Toe Ridge, Shady Death Ridge, and Surrender Bridge. Consider what these names mean with reference to Zinny's story.
    
    
12. Uncle Nate often calls Aunt Jessie his "Redbird." What does the term Redbird symbolize in the novel?
    
    

About the Author:

Sharon Creech is the author of Walk Two Moons, which received the 1995 Newbery Medal, was an ALA Notable Children's Book, and was listed as an NCTE Notable Trade Book, among other prestigious awards. Her other books include, Absolutely Normal Chaos and Pleasing the Ghost. Sharon Creech lives in Surrey, England, for nine months of the year. During the summer months she returns to Lake Chautauqua in western New York State to spend time with her grown children.

Editorial Reviews

A teenager lost in the maelstrom of her large Virginia- mountain family devises a personal walkabout when she takes on the project of single-handedly rehabilitating a 20-mile-long wilderness trail.

Until recently, Zinnia Taylor, 13, spent a lot of time in the "Quiet Zone" of Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate's house next door. But Aunt Jessie has died, and Uncle Nate remains bereft. Calling her his Redbird, he spends most of his time chasing through the woods, believing he is in pursuit of her. Adding to Uncle Nate and Zinny's burden is the death of her cousin, Rose, who died of the whooping cough when she and Zinny were both four. Amidst this pain, Zinny is looking for a place to call her own, for a sense of who she is, and for someone—anyone—who cares about her "most." The plotting can become capricious in the extreme, but Creech (Pleasing the Ghost, 1996, etc.) crams her novel full of wonderful characters, proficient dialogue, bracing descriptions, and a merry use of language. A bundle of contradictions, Zinny is at her prickly, individualistic best when fending off the overtures of 16-year-old Jake Boone, whom she (mistakenly) suspects of using her to get to her older sister.

Kirkus Reviews