Dane's lunchbox memorial to loss- Getting lucky- finding hope

Final Prompt: This is both a "social novel" about a place in crisis and a modern narrative novel about how people navigate their lives through love, money and the lack thereof, faith, devotion, and finding what really matters. Does this ending work for this novel? Do you think that Pancake gets it right with the decisions of her major characters? Does Bant's last chapter give us the vision of the future that we need? How do Uncle Mogey's words that Bant remembers at the end add to the power of the falling action of the novel. He says I've learned something about times tike these. You have to grow big enough inside to hold both the loss and the hope."(pp. 356-57) How does this statement help to define the novel and send the reader off with a clear message? What is the message? What is the best and worst thing about this work of fiction?

Corey "plots" His Ride- Bant Finds "love" - Jimmy "names" the marriage

Corey uses his underground favor for Rabbit to get him what he needs to finally race the 4-wheeler. I was afraid that Rabbit would just leave him there once he got his metal panel. Now Rabbit- there's a charmer! Does he ring true? Bant really likes R.L. or at least feels the heat when he is around. Will she or won't she and why? Lace knows that Yellow Root and Cherrytop are worth fighting for but what is she willing to do and what is she willing to lose to keep up the fight? Is it really worth it when the odds are so stacked against her? Look what happened to Tout.

Avery and Dane: Going Down In the Flood

What does it mean to be an outsider? For Dane, life seems hard to navigate because he is different. Is this sibling rivalry or just sibling contempt? Do Corey and Dane share any traits? When we first meet Avery, he seems to be the worrywart son, who just wants to not have to spend so much time thinking about his declining mother. He seems to lack sympathy for his mother's plight and her desire to live the rest of her years back home where she was born. Yet, Avery's chapter really blows us out of our complacency and makes us realize that sometimes we judge others on too little information. What else does the author advance here by having Avery tell us his story of Buffalo Creek so personally and vividly?

Mogey's Story and Lace's Sorrow

Bant looks up to Uncle Mogey. She knows he is at one with the land, and she respects his devotion to knowing and being a steward of this place that he loves so much. He tells his extraordinary story about the buck and what is a truly surrealistic experience that he cannot deny but which is hard to integrate into his belief system and life as he knows it. Lace, on the other hand, just knows that this place is home and finds the move to North Carolina difficult and deadening to her spirit. And then, there's her relationship with Jimmy Make that she is trying to save. What does she mean when she says "But even with romance, without touching, without even much talking, me and Jimmy Make kept getting tied together tighter and tighter, only it no longer had anything to do with that slime green vine. This was rope. Knotted rope, scratchy and binding, and if you didn't feel it always, you sure did if you turned." (p.185)

Welcome to Foxcroft AP English Strange As This Weather Has Been

Welcome to a conversation about the novel Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake. This is a contemporary novel about a family, a place, and something which threatens to destroy everything that they have ever had. It is a novel about nature, about environmental ethics, but mostly, a novel about people trying to learn what their life is about and what values that they hold the dearest and what things matter most to them. It is about love and choices and amazing discoveries. It is about the conflicts in families, the differences in siblings and often tenuous relationship between nature and human beings. The quality of our understanding of this book and what it holds for us, the reader, will depend on our ability to help each other see it from the varied perspectives that our wide experiences provide. We will be scattered all over the world, yet this discussion will unite us and bring us back together about ideas and human longings and what makes life, in the end, worth living.