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A Guide to Teaching
Dangerous Skies
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
About the Book
Before Reading
Setting the Scene || Reading Skills and Strategies
Sharing the Book
Questions for Group Discussion || Thinking Like a Writer
Activities Across the Curriculum
Language Arts || Social Studies || Science || Art
Author Interview
Awards
Other Books About Friendship
Feel free to print this teacher's guide for use in the classroom.
About the Book
The events of the novel are told in first person through the voice of Buck Smith, reflecting
back five years earlier on a spring that changed his life and that of his best friend, Tunes Smith. The friends grew up together in a
farming community in Northampton County, Virginia, spending many afternoons in each other's company fishing on Chesapeake Bay. Because
Tunes is a black girl and Buck is a white boy, adults suddenly view their friendship with caution as the two near adulthood.
The greatest challenge to their relationship occurs when they find the corpse of Jorge Rodrigues in the Bay, and Tunes is suspected of
murder. Jumbo Rawlin, the community's largest landowner, comes up with evidence that implicates Tunes, and everyone, including the
sheriff, seems inclined to take his word over hers. Under the full weight of a murder investigation, the community's fissures begin to
show, and Buck must confront racial prejudice much closer to home than he ever expected to find it.
Toward the end of the book Tunes reveals to Buck that Rawlin had sexually abused her a couple of years back and subsequently framed her
for Jorge's murder. Too terrorized and ashamed to tell the truth, Tunes runs away, which only deepens her guilt in the eyes of the
townspeople. Buck finally convinces Tunes to tell her story and discovers what she has long known: that truth doesn't necessarily
overcome prejudice. As a result, Buck loses an important friendship and an innocent view of the world, but it is Tunes whose life
is most radically disrupted by the "season of dangerous skies."
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Before Reading
Setting the Scene
Tell students that the story takes place in a rural town on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Help them locate Virginia
and Chesapeake Bay on a map of the United States and have them identify the Bay's eastern shore. Explain that Chesapeake Bay separates
mainland Virginia from the state's eastern shore, which is located on the Delmarva Peninsula. Watermen have made their living from the Bay
for centuries. Waterman is an old English name for fisherman, and Chesapeake Bay is the only place in the United States where the name
is used.
Reading Skills and Strategies
Evaluate Fact and Opinion:
Racism is a main theme in the novel. How does racism affect the characters' perceptions of fact and opinion?
As students read have them distinguish between fact and opinion as perceived by the various characters.
Make Judgments and Decisions:
Ask students to notice judgments and decisions the characters make, and then to make their own: Is there
anything Buck or Tunes should have done differently? If so, what, and why?
Make Predictions:
A suspenseful novel such as this one keeps readers constantly guessing what will happen next. Have students pause
at the end of each chapter to predict what will happen. Afterward, discuss those events they predicted correctly and which ones surprised
them.
Recognize Point of View:
Ask students to think about how point of view affects the way in which the story is told: How might the novel
be different if it were told from Tunes's point of view instead of Buck's?
Sequence Events:
Early on, Buck acknowledges ". . . it will be hard enough to tell it straight even if I just stick to things as
they happened, one by one." Is this how Buck tells it? Ask students to pay attention to sequence as they read, and make a timeline on
which they record major events in the book.
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Sharing the Book
Questions for Group Discussion
Why does Buck say that even if the events of the spring of 1991 didn't happen, "things were going to change right soon anyways" between
him and Tunes? (page 7)
Who are the people Buck describes as "come-heres?" How are they different from the "Shore-born and-bred?" (pages 74&75)
"I can see now that none of us Smiths, black or white, had ever lost sight of that line of otherness, and it came to divide us more
bitterly than if the love had never been there at all." What does Buck mean by this? What is the "line of otherness?" (page 98)
What does Tunes mean when she says "there's a lot more evil things than killing a man?" (page 174)
The fathers of Buck and Tunes play important roles in their lives. Compare and contrast the relationship between Tunes and Kneebone and
between Buck and his father.
How does Jumbo Rawlin's economic status and power enable him to manipulate community opinion and escape punishment for his actions?
"You've got to learn that people make mistakes and think wrong even with the best of intentions. You've got to learn not to let it break
your heart." What do you think about this advice from Buck's Gran? (page 130)
Thinking Like a Writer
Write a Letter:
In the months after the trial Buck writes to Tunes every day, telling her what was happening "on the farm, in the woods,
and on the water." Write a letter that you think Buck might have written to Tunes during this period. (Easy) (page 227)
Rewrite from Another Perspective:
Choose an event or chapter of the book and rewrite it from Tunes's perspective. (Average)
Write a Script:
Suppose Buck and Tunes were to meet again twenty years after they last saw one another, when both are adults in their
thirties. Write a scene in dialogue form about their meeting. Think about what their lives are like, what they tell each other,
what they say about the past and what they don't say.
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Activities Across the Curriculum
Language Arts
Throughout the book the author uses nature and the natural world as metaphors for and reflections of human events and feelings.
Find an example of a metaphor in Dangerous Skies, and explain how it works.
Buck and his neighbors use vocabulary and expressions particular to a fishing and boating community. Make a list of these words and expressions. Try to define unfamiliar words by context. Then look them up in a dictionary to test your definitions.
Social Studies
Although the novel takes place long past the time of slavery, the legacy of slavery remains -- in the racism of the community as well as
in the surname Buck and Tunes share. Another legacyóthat of the struggle for civil rights is also present, embodied by the Reverend King
Saloman Jones and in the fact that Buck and Tunes attend the same school. Research the history of civil rights struggles in
twentieth-century Virginia or in your own community. What goals are yet to be met in the twenty-first century?
Buck and Tunes grow up in a fishing and farming community. What are the major economic activities of your community? What relation
do they have to the local environment? How do they affect the way people earn their living? Research your local economy and present your
findings in a chart.
Learn more about Chesapeake Bay, the inlet of the Atlantic Ocean that plays such an important role in Dangerous Skies. How long and
wide is it? Which two states does it fall within? Which rivers flow into it? Make a map of the Chesapeake Bay area that shows the answers
to these questions.
Science
"I began to see that all of nature worked in cycles, by some turns beautiful and miraculous, by others senseless and destructive."
Choose an example of something in nature that works as Buck describes it. Present a report on "A Natural Cycle."
The skies in this book are "dangerous" due to approaching storms. Research the science of storms. How do they form? How can they be
predicted? What are some of their effects?
Art
The book jacket features art by Paul Lee showing Buck and Tunes on the Bay. Draw or paint a scene from the novel focusing on the
characters as you imagine them or on one of the many natural scenes described.
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An Interview with Suzanne Fisher Staples
Q: How did you get the idea for Dangerous Skies?
A: I wanted to tell a story that talks about racism and the way it affects all of us, and the complexity of the situation in terms
of how it mixes up relationships between people. I left the country to work as a journalist in Asia in the 1970s, a time when people
talked a lot about tolerance. To come back at the end of the 1980s and find that so much racism still existed was very difficult for me.
Q: Where do the characters in Dangerous Skies come from?
A: The idea was sparked by a friendship between black and white kids whose families had lived in the area for a very long time.
But the characters aren't based on the real people. In a way, all of our characters come from us. You can't make up a character without
having part of it in you. Your own reactions are all you have. You try on the circumstances of someone else's life and imagine how
you would react.
Q: The book has so many details about the natural world. Is that also something that comes from your life?
A: Yes. I grew up in the country, and my favorite thing was going out to play in the woods. I've always been a wildlife watcher.
I used to hide out in the woods and wait for deer to appear. I also loved fishing when I was a kid. I still love to fish today.
Q: How do young people respond to Dangerous Skies?
A: The things I hear from kids make me feel really good about their clarity of vision. They make comments about the book that are
more perceptive than adults, who tend to reject the racism. Adults say the book is an overstatement. Kids say they see it every day.
They say what happened to Tunes was unfair but was realistic. We adults have a lot more baggage. Maybe it means we [as a country] are
making progress.
Suzanne Fisher Staples worked for many years as a journalist in Asia, where she wrote her first book, Shabanu, winner of the 1989
Newbery Honor Award. When she returned to the United States she lived for two years as a "come-here" on the eastern shore of
Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.
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Awards
for Suzanne Fisher Staple's
Dangerous Skies
1996 Children's Book of the Year, Bank Street College
1997 Best Book for Young Adults (ALA)
1997 Notable Books for a Global Society
1996 Children's Books (NY Public Library)
1997 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 1996
1997 Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts (NCTE)
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Other HarperCollins Books about Friendship
After the Dancing Days by Margaret I. Rostkowski
The Brave by Robert Lipsyte
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Gentlehands by M. E. Kerr
Letters to Julia by Barbara Ware Holmes
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