Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. The final lines of the novel are a plea for empathy as Destiny asks the reader to make the world a better place.

• How does the author build empathy between the characters and the reader? (topic sentence)
• Provide and discuss in support of your topic sentence two examples from the novel where the author builds empathy for the characters.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain why empathy is an important topic in the novel and how it contributes to the novel’s overall purpose. Include a connection to the novel’s themes of The Refugee Experience or The Universal Nature of Trauma.

2. During Tareq’s time in Istanbul, he and Musa spend a lot of time in “Little Syria.