1. Madeline Prawn records her "inspirational thoughts" in a notebook, and Thoreau regularly wrote in his journals.

Do the other characters consciously or unconsciously imitate Thoreau's actions? How? Read about Thoreau's ideas and explain whether the characters reflect his teachings truthfully in their own ideas and actions, or if they distort his teachings.

2. Uncle Freddy and Aunt Alex teach "about the wise men who had lived in Concord a hundred years ago, Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and all their poet-friends and fellow thinkers" in The Concord College of Transcendental Knowledge. Why are these people called transcendentalists? What ideas did they have in common? Which of these ideas are expressed in the novel?

3. "No longer was the old goose flying with his mate, guiding another young family of excited half-grown fledglings from the blue northern lake where the goslings had been...