74 pages • 2 hours read
Margaret Pokiak-FentonFatty Legs: A True Story
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Quiz
Reading Check, Multiple Choice & Short Answer Quizzes
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Opening Note-Preface
Reading Check
1. For whom did Jordan-Fenton want her mother-in-law to tell her story?
2. Who does Jordan-Fenton quote about the reason for dragons in children’s books?
Multiple Choice
1. Debbie Reese’s foreword compares stories told by “outsiders” to stories indigenous people tell of themselves. What is her purpose in writing this foreword?
A) to entertain
B) to inform
C) to persuade
D) Both B & C
E) Both A & C
2. Jordan-Fenton’s preface explains how Fatty Legs came to be a book and the book’s world impact since publication. What is the purpose of her preface?
A) to entertain
B) to inform
C) to persuade
D) Both B & C
E) Both A & C
3. This book is an example of what kind of writing?
A) Historical fiction
B) Speculative fiction
C) Memoir
D) Fantastic non-fiction
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. According to Reese and Jordan-Fenton, why is Pokiak-Fenton’s story so important?
2. Describe the tone of Debbie Reese’s foreword.
3. Describe the tone of Jordan-Fenton’s preface.
Introduction-Chapter 2
Reading Check
1. According to the introduction, how long has Pokiak-Fenton kept her secret?
2. What book has Ayouniq/Rosie brought home from school?
3. From whom does Olemaun have to get approval to go to school?
4. How long does it take Olemaun and her family to travel to Aklavik?
5. What sorts of things does Olemaun’s family tell her will happen at the residential school in hopes that she’ll change her mind?
6. Why does Olemaun’s father finally agree to let her go to residential school?
Multiple Choice
1. In Chapter 1, the narrator says, “They plucked us from our homes on the scattered islands of the Arctic Ocean and carried us back to the nests they called schools, in Aklavik.” What is the tone of the word plucked in this sentence?
A) Condemning
B) Ominous
C) Both A & C
D) None of the above
2. What is the connotation of the word plucked in the above sentence? (see question 1 for sentence)
A) The students were carefully selected to go to the residential schools.
B) The students were well-cared for and delighted in at the residential schools.
C) The students were taken away, sometimes by force, to go to the residential schools.
D) The village elders carefully selected children to go to the residential schools, and those who did not obey were forced to go anyway.
3. “In late May, when the sun stood constant watch in the sky and night traversed it only briefly like the shadow of a passing bird’s wing, I found my father preparing the hides of animals he had collected from his trapline.” (Chapter 2)
This passage includes which two types of figurative language?
A) Understatement and punning
B) Hyperbole and sarcasm
C) Allusion and onomatopoeia
D) Simile and personification
4. Which of these passages from Chapter 2 does not foreshadow the horrors of Olemaun’s school experience?
A) “Behind them stood two immense wooden buildings, so much larger than our schooner, with rows and rows of windows. I had forgotten how big these buildings were.”
B) “On the first day of the games, my father made a balloon for us by blowing up the sac from the throat of a ptarmigan.”
C) “They were children with solemn faces, some of them crying.”
D) “I did not yet understand how long a year was.”
5. In Chapter 2, the narrator says, “They were not family; they were like owls and ravens raising wrens.” What does the authors mean by this statement?
A) This simile compares the nuns and priests running the residential schools to vicious, watchful birds of prey and the children to small, lively songbirds.
B) This characterization implies that the nuns and priests running the residential schools are wise and clever, and the wrens have a lot to learn about how to master the world around them.
C) This statement implies the irony that wrens are much larger than owls and ravens. The authors is making an inside joke that only Inuvialuit people will understand.
D) All of the above statements are true.
E) None of the above statements is true.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Olemaun’s father describes her as “a stubborn child” (Chapter 1). What evidence from Chapters 1 and 2 supports his description?
2. What purpose does it serve for the narrator to explain all the ways people told her not to go to school. What is the underlying message of these passages?
3. Re-read the passage from multiple choice question #3 (“In late May…”). Explain what days and nights are like in the Arctic Circle at that time of year. What is the astrophysical reason for this?
4. Compare the lessons Inuvialuit people value to the things Olemaun hopes to learn at school. What do these differences say about the Inuvialuit people’s ideas about education versus those of the settler-colonists?
Chapters 3-5
Reading Check
1. What does Olemaun nickname the nun who brings her into the school?
2. How long does Olemaun have to wait to learn to read? What do the children do while they wait for that time to come?
3. How does Olemaun distinguish among the origins of the girls who come to school with her?
4. Olemaun hopes that Sister MacQuillan will be her teacher when learning starts. Who ends up being her teacher instead?
5. What meal does Olemaun accidentally spill on the Raven’s habit?
6. Why doesn’t Olemaun’s family come to get her when the ice begins to melt after her first year?
Multiple Choice
1. Chapter 3 includes this description: “[...] her parka cover was drawn high at the sides, the back hanging low like a beaver’s tail, unlike the Mother Hubbard parkas we wore in the west.”
This descriptive sentence contains which types of figurative language?
A) Oversimplification and irony
B) Plot twist and allusion
C) Simile and imagery
D) Simile and sarcasm
2. Which types of figurative language appear in the following sentence from Chapter 3?
“[...] she held tight and, with the same motion a bird makes to pull a piece of flesh from a fish, clamped the jaws of the shears down on my braid and severed it.”
A) Oversimplification and irony
B) Punning and allusion
C) Simile and oxymoron
D) Imagery and metaphor
3. In the opening to Chapter 4, the narrator observes that “The summer took an eternity to pass, but eventually it did.”
This sentence contains which types of figurative language?
A) Paradox and hyperbole
B) Allusion and simile
C) Imagery and understatement
D) Simile and metaphor
4. In Chapter 4, the narrator recalls, “I wasn’t sure what she meant to teach me, but I had something to teach her about the spirit of us Inuvialuit.” This statement is example of which of the following literary devices?
A) Irony
B) Paradox
C) Scene changing
D) Foreshadowing
5. Which of the following shows that young Olemaun viewed Sister MacQuillan as a force for good?
A) Sister MacQuillan is described as floating into the room instead of walking.
B) The Raven’s cruelty is emphasized, creating a starker contrast between her and Sister MacQuillan.
C) Both A & B
D) None of the above
Short-Answer Response
1. What does it signify when the nuns cut the girls’ hair, “teach” them how to clean themselves, and give them clothes to wear?
2. How does Olemaun’s stubbornness reveal itself in Chapters 3-5?
3. Give examples of how the text demonstrates the cultural diversity of indigenous people from Olemaun’s region.
4. Characterize Olemaun’s experience at the residential school so far. How does it compare to the historical information you have encountered about the residential school experience?
Chapters 6-Afterword
Reading Check
1. What color stockings does the Raven give to Olemaun?
2. Ultimately, what does Olemaun do with the stockings?
3. Who helps Olemaun get the stockings she wants?
4. Why does Olemaun’s mother say “not my girl” when she reunites with her family?
5. According to the author’s note in “After the Story,” why did Olemaun go back to school after she was free not to return?
6. According to the afterword, what is one of the signs that indigenous communities have begun healing from the residential school experience?
Multiple Choice
1. Chapter 6 contains this sentence: “The laughter of the other girls enveloped me. It wrapped a million fingers around me and would not let go.”
The sentence includes which type of figurative language?
A) oversimplification
B) hyperbole
C) simile
D) personification
2. Which of these is an example of how the text reverses the captured bird metaphor and emphasizes freedom in Chapter 6?
A) “At that point, I was truly free of the outsiders’ school. I had left it behind me, back past the tree line in a tangled cluster of waterways.”
B) “After two long years, I was out on the open water, where I belonged.”
C) “Wherever the boat stopped, we children would scramble up the banks of the shore and run around wildly, stretching our legs and enjoying the space.”
D) All of the above.
E) Only B & C
3. In the final sentence of Chapter 7, Olemaun observes, “My curiosity had led me far away, and now here I was, after two years, satisfied that I now knew what happened to girls who went down rabbit holes.”
What literary device does this sentence employ?
A) Irony
B) Allusion
C) Conclusion
D) Plot twist
4. What is the significance of the above sentence (“My curiosity…”)?
A) Olemaun had an opportunity to explore the world outside her home, and she learned to read.
B) Olemaun gained a great deal of wisdom and knowledge about herself from her experiences at the residential schools, including a greater appreciation for her culture and her home.
C) To Olemaun, the world of residential schools was upside down and backward, but still she learned about life and what happened in the book Ayouniq/Rosie wouldn’t finish reading to her.
D) Any of the above
E) Only A and C
5. What does Olemaun’s clever solution to the red stockings represent?
A) The moment represents Olemaun getting even with the girls who work with the Raven to make her miserable and allows readers to see what seasonal change looks like in the Arctic Circle.
B) The moment represents Olemaun’s greatest revenge and keeps the Raven guessing for the rest of the year.
C) The moment represents Olemaun’s reclaiming her power and destroying the Raven’s ability to control or humiliate her.
D) The moment represents Olemaun’s desire to destroy all the residential schools and the end of the Raven’s career.
Short-Answer Response
1. What does Olemaun mean when she says she taught the Raven that “a wren can be just as clever as a raven”? (Chapter 6)
2. Why is it historically significant that Sister MacQuillan (the Swan) calls Olemaun by her given name instead of Margaret?
3. What is the literary significance of that same moment?
4. Review your answer to multiple-choice question #2. How does the answer you selected extend the bird metaphor?
5. Why are stories like Olemaun’s important contributions to national (US and Canada) and world histories?
Quizzes – Answer Key
Opening Note-Preface
Reading Check
1. She wanted her children, Pokiak-Fenton’s grandchildren, to know their grandmother’s brave story of survival and triumph over oppression.
2. Neil Gaiman (foreword)
Multiple Choice
1. D
2. B
3. C
Short-Answer Response
1. Pokiak-Fenton is one of few elders in indigenous communities who will even talk about their personal experiences at residential schools. These stories are rarely told and rarely told to wide audiences by people who as children had that horrific experience. The impact on many generations of people requires that indigenous people tell the story to themselves and to the world so that history doesn’t try to erase it. Pokiak-Fenton’s story gives voice to many who went through the same experience and helps balance the perspectives represented in how this history gets told.
2. Reese’s foreword is passionate, informative, and/or urgent as a call to action. Students might select other adjectives and have various examples of evidence from the text.
3. Jordan-Fenton’s preface is awe-inspiring, informative, and/or passionate. Students might select other adjectives and have various examples of evidence from the text.
Introduction-Chapter 2
Reading Check
1. 60 years
2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Chapter 1)
3. Her father (Chapter 1)
4. Five days by boat (Chapter 1, Chapter 2)
5. They will cut off her hair, they will make her do their work, hard labor of all kinds. She won’t get to have traditional food, wear traditional clothes, or sing the songs of her people. The priests will tell her that her soul is bad and needs forgiveness. Most of all, she won’t be able to return home if she changes her mind. (Chapters 1-2)
6. She’s stubborn and likely wouldn’t stop asking until he agreed she could go. (Chapter 1)
Multiple Choice
1. C
2. C
3. D
4. B
5. A
Short-Answer Response
1. Student answers will provide varying evidence from the first two Chapters of the text. Evidence includes her persistent asking, and coming up with ways around the troubles her family says she might have at the school. She insists she can handle anything that might happen. When she starts to get a feeling and see evidence of what her family has said, she refuses to turn back.
2. These passages foreshadow what she will experience at the school. She also weaves in the experiences of others who endured residential schools (her father and her half-sister) whose stories Pokiak-Fenton gets to tell as a part of her own. The stories also create a foreboding tone, and set up a little bit of dramatic irony, as readers can see in the illustrations and in the things the narrator notices, that her family was probably right about the horrors of the schools. (Chapters 1-2)
3. The sun barely sets, and by summer it might not set fully at all, creating an endless twilight. This has to do with the tilt of the Earth, which creates seasons. During summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the earth tilts toward the sun. Since it is at the top of the Earth, the Arctic Circle undergoes a sort of night-less summer. (Students should learn most of this in pre-reading context activities.)
4. Inuvialuit education teaches children things like sewing, hunting, dog sledding, and preserving meat. Olemaun hopes to learn to read and write. Her people tell her that she will also learn that her soul is bad and needs forgiveness. These differences reveal different world views about what it takes to be a human in the world. The Inuvialuit value being able to care for themselves and each other, to feed and clothe themselves, and to thrive despite the harsh environment. This does not mean they don’t value literacy. However, the settler-colonists discard that knowledge which shows that they don’t value the Inuvialuit way of life at all and would rather see it stopped in service to Christian values and fitting into European-based society. (Students might make these inferences from the text and combine their knowledge with information from the pre-reading context.)
Chapters 3-5
Reading Check
1. The Raven (Chapter 3)
2. She has to wait until the water freezes (summer is over). Until then the children do hard labor/chores and play. (Chapter 3)
3. She details the style of clothes and shoes they wear. (Chapter 3)
4. The Raven (Chapter 4)
5. Cabbage soup (Chapter 4)
6. Her family wasn’t able to make it all the way home before the ice froze the previous year. They are afraid they’ll get caught by the ice again if they travel back to Aklavik. (Chapter 5)
Multiple Choice
1. C
2. D
3. A
4. D
5. C
Short-Answer Response
1. It shows that the school doesn’t value the children’s culture, that they consider them savages that need reprogramming, and that they don’t believe they have basic human skills. (Students might make these inferences from the text and combine their knowledge with information from the pre-reading context.)
2. Students have a variety of examples to choose from to answer this question. Some examples include Olemaun’s refusal to eat the cabbage stew even though she is hungry, and the fact that she learns how to read quite well in a short amount of time under extreme psychological torment.
3. The scene where she describes where the girls come from based on what their parkas look like is a prime example. Students may also cite the rivalry between the Inuvialuit and the Gwichʼin. (Chapter 3)
4. Student answers will be heavily text-based, pulling from Chapters 1-5, and will vary based on how much historical context is provided before reading.
Chapters 6-Afterword
Reading Check
1. Red (Chapter 6)
2. She burns them in the fire used to heat water for laundry when no one is looking. (Chapter 6)
3. Sister MacQuillan (Chapter 6)
4. Olemaun’s appearance has changed, and her mother doesn’t recognize her. Also, Olemaun doesn’t seem to like or want to eat her family’s food. (Chapter 7)
5. The law changes, which makes her have to go back. Plus, she wants to go to look out for her younger siblings.
6. Students can list many possible answers including reviving lost or nearly lost indigenous languages, wearing traditional clothes, performing traditional ceremonies more often, and modernizing cultural traditions (adapting them to life on reservations and in urban environments).
Multiple Choice
1. D
2. D
3. B
4. D
5. C (The incident occurs in Chapter 6, but students must draw this conclusion from their view of the power dynamics between the Raven and Olemaun throughout the text.)
Short-Answer Response
1. This statement signifies Olemaun’s triumph over the people and system that tried to stamp out her spirit and disregarded wisdom that comes from her cultural heritage. It shows her understanding that she inverted the colonial power dynamic, which boosted her self-esteem.
2. As a part of the colonial program, residential schools sought to strip indigenous children of their identities, including their names. This was an important part of their “re-education.” When Sister MacQuillan uses Olemaun’s given name she demonstrates that she doesn’t necessarily agree with this policy and, at the very least, she greatly respects Olemaun.
3. In the literary sense, the moment represents the end of Olemaun’s time at the residential schools, and the resolution to her story. Symbolically, Sister MacQuillan gives Olemaun her name back, since it will be a passport for re-entry into her community.
4. Students should have selected “D—All of the above” and explicated the ways in which the students are packed closely together on the boat like little birds in a nest, and how they play freely like small birds. The story also emphasizes the freedom of open space and open sea, and portrays the landscape almost from a bird’s-eye view, instead of at sea level. (Chapter 7)
5. Stories like Olemaun’s give voice to a historical period that official history seems to ignore, and a perspective that some would rather have silenced. These stories challenge and criticize the colonial project, and demonstrate its failure to erase indigenous people and their culture. Even the small details about the Inuvialuit way of life preserve the culture in written form and might inspire younger generations of all backgrounds who have endured similar attempts at erasure to reclaim their culture and traditions. (Afterword)
