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Readers > Talk it Up! > Discussion guides > 2011 Oregon Reader's Choice Award Nominees > Nation

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Discussion guide written by Jane Corry.

Summary

After a devastating tsunami destroys all that they have ever known, Mau, an island boy, and Daphne, an aristocratic English girl and heir to the British throne in this alternative history, together with a small band of refugees, set about rebuilding their community and all the things that are important in their lives.

Booktalk

After his month on the island of the boys, Mau is ready to go home and be made a man. There will be feasting on the beach and his initiation ceremony. The whole nation will be there. But just as he is ready get into the canoe he spent the last month carving, all the birds take flight at once. Then comes a huge crash! Mau just makes it to his canoe. Paddling from the lagoon into the ocean he looks around and sees that the horizon is one great cloud, boiling and climbing, full of fire and lightning and growling like a nightmare.

Mau does get home, but it's not the same. There is no one to welcome him back. The village is gone. Well, the huts are still there but the people are gone.

Ermintrude had been hiding in her cabin on the Sweet Judy when that same storm hit. She was on her way to join her father, the governor of Port Mercia and 138th in succession to the British throne. In fact she is the only living person aboard when the boat lands in the middle of the same island.

Can this boy-man and this girl whose footprints have no toes, who decides that she needs to be called Daphne instead of Ermintrude, actually rebuild a nation?

367 pages, 6th grade and up

Discussion questions

Warning! Some of the questions contain key elements of the plot. Do not read if you don't want to know what happens!

  1. When Mau is at Boys Island, he finds a sign that says "MEN HELP OTHER MEN." How did this influence his behavior? (p 13.)
  2. On page 33, it says, "There were marks on it. They spelled out Sweet Judy in faded white paint - but they spelled 'Sweet Judy' in vain. Mau was good at reading important things. He could read the sea, the weather, the tracks of animals, tattoos, and the night sky." What kinds of things can you read?
  3. When Ermintrude changes her name to Daphne, what other changes does she make?
  4. What are the differences and similarities between Mau's relationship to his gods and Daphne's to hers?
  5. What is Mau's vision of his Nation?
  6. What are some of the rules that Mau carries in his head? That Daphne carries in her head? What kind of rules do you carry in your head?
  7. While mutineers think Mau's people are savages, Daphne thinks the mutineers are savages. What does savage mean to each of them?

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