1. Find out the procedures for reporting child abuse. What happens after a case of abuse has been reported?

2. Look in a volume of poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson to identify the poem quoted on page 39 of Once Upon a Dark November. Explain how it relates to the novel.

3. Why is Katie such a passive heroine? Compare her with heroines in other mystery novels. Are they passive, too?

4. Katie is a witness to a crime. What does the law require of witnesses like her?