For Teachers

•Describe the main character, Hannah Pryor. What is she like? How does she see herself? What kinds of relationships does she have with her father, the women of the town, her friends?

•What was a teenager's day like in Puritan Boston? How were young people expected to behave? Compare their chores, schooling, and recreation to yours.

• Describe the conflicts that Hannah faces. How does she resolve them? How does she change?

• How would you describe the roles of women in Puritan days? How did Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson challenge those roles? What about Goody Hawkins? Hannah's mother? And Hannah herself?

• How did Hannah's role as a daughter influence her ways of thinking? Her actions?

• "We are knit together as one," said Governor Winthrop. The Puritans were a tight-knit community with many laws, but what about the individual. Did he/she have rights?

• Colonial Boston didn't just have English settlers among the population; blacks and Native Americans lived here, too. What do you think the story had to say about difference and tolerance, if anything?

• Were the Puritan elders too strict? Do you think they got anything right?

• The Quakers were considered by many Puritans to be radical, strange, dangerous. In fact, being a Quaker preacher was illegal. What would you have thought about the Quakers if you were a Puritan boy/girl? What would you have thought if you saw Mary Dyer walking hand in hand with two young men and willing to die rather than comply with the law?

• Was Hannah's father a just man?

• Is it important to read about history? Why?

• Why do the Puritans figure so prominently in American identity? Are we like them at all?

• If you were creating a New Society like the Puritans did whom would you let in?

Themes to Explore in The Whispering Rod:

• Duty versus conscience
• Family labor in the early Colonial period
• Community needs v. individual's rights
• Tolerance
• Women's roles in society
• Religious freedom
• Foundation of the American identity

Contact the author at: nancy@historicalfiction-ya.com or the publisher at: marketing@whitemane.com