Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. James Hampton in The Seventh Most Important Thing is based on the real James Hampton who created The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s Millennium General Assembly. If you’ve heard of Hampton or the sculpture before reading The Seventh Most Important Thing, what do you know about them?

Teaching Suggestion: Use this question to direct a discussion about the use of a real person and piece of art to illustrate the main points of the novel and how a person doesn’t have to be famous to have an impact.

• A Smithsonian link to information about James Hampton as an artist
• A YouTube link to a lecture from Smithsonian curator Helen Ingalls about The Throne of the Third Heaven

2. Pearsall set The Seventh Most Important Thing during the American civil rights movement. List events of the civil rights movement Pearsall mentions in the novel and note one thing you know about each incident.

Teaching Suggestion: Use this question to open discussion about how setting influences story.