61 pages • 2 hours read
The Swiss Family Robinson
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During Reading
Reading Questions & Paired Texts
Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.
CHAPTERS 1-4
Reading Check
1. Where is the family’s ship headed?
2. Who hunts the agouti when the family first gets to the island?
3. What pet does Fritz adopt after Turk kills its mother?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is lucky about the ship being wedged between the rocks?
2. What disagreement do Fritz and Father have about looking for survivors from the ship’s crew?
3. What kind of home does the family decide to build, and why?
Paired Resource
“Why Writers Treasure Islands”
- This Guardian article explores some of the reasons island settings appeal to writers. (Note that at the end of its third paragraph there is a parenthetical remark you may wish to redact for young readers.)
- This resource relates to the theme of The Lure of the Wild.
- What are some of the reasons this article gives for the popularity of islands as settings in literature? What specific purpose does the author see in Wyss’s choice of the island setting in Swiss Family Robinson? What evidence from the text backs up this interpretation? Do you see any other potential purposes in Wyss’s choice of setting?
CHAPTERS 5-8
Reading Check
1. What animals do the family use to carry their heavy construction materials?
1. What does the family decide to call their treehouse?
3. What kind of meat is Elizabeth skeptical about eating?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How does the family spend the first full day after their first night in the treehouse?
2. What precautions does the family take in preparing and eating cassava bread?
3. How do Father and the three eldest boys show determination after they realize how difficult it will be to assemble the pinnace and get it back to shore?
Paired Resource
- This New Zealand Geographic article describes the long history of attempts to settle one of the area’s outlying islands and details the Bell family’s years living in isolation there.
- This resource relates to the themes of The Lure of the Wild, The Religious Value of Hard Work, The Importance of Faith in Survival, and Colonialism as a God-Given Right.
- Why did so many people try to settle on Raoul Island over the years? Which settlers’ story seems most similar to that of the family in The Swiss Family Robinson? What similar motifs regarding hard work, religion, and colonialism do you see in those settlers’ story?
CHAPTERS 9-13
Reading Check
1. What kind of tree does the family plan to use to make shoes and boots from?
2. What is an onager?
3. What kind of competition does Father design for the one-year anniversary of their island stranding?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does it take so long for the family to build a staircase?
2. Why does the family bother to hollow out a cave in the cliffs?
3. How does Jack end up in danger in the swamp, and how does he save himself?
Paired Resource
“The Camel’s Hump Is an Ugly Lump”
- This Rudyard Kipling children’s poem advises that hard work is better for a person than idleness.
- This resource relates to the theme of The Religious Value of Hard Work.
- This poem was written about 80 years after The Swiss Family Robinson, but it is also a text aimed at teaching children the value of hard work. What hard work does the family do on the staircase, the cave, and their other projects in this section of the book? What is their reward for this hard work? How would you compare the impact that the novel and this Kipling poem might have on their intended audience? Which one is more persuasive, and why?
CHAPTERS 14-17
Reading Check
1. What kind of animal does Fritz use the pinnace to tow back to camp?
2. What does the family discover in a cave that they think of as a “great treasure”?
3. What creature does the family capture and create a saddle and bridle for so that they can ride it?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How is one of the family’s donkeys killed?
2. What is Father’s motivation for letting his sons have so much independence on the island?
3. What situation does Fritz get caught in that causes Father to tell him that he had “[given] him up for lost”? (Chapter 17)
Paired Resource
- This resource from the University of São Paulo explains the Christian concept of the Great Chain of Being.
- This resource relates to the theme of Colonialism as a God-Given Right.
- What is the “Great Chain of Being”? In what sense is this idea the foundation of the family’s attitude toward nonhuman animals and their own role as settlers of the island? How are hierarchies also important in the family dynamic? If you do not accept that there are natural, which behaviors and beliefs of the family in this story might be troubling?
CHAPTERS 18-21
Reading Check
1. What creature does the family use to carry messages back and forth when they are in separate locations?
2. How many years pass in the large narrative gap between Chapter 18 and Chapter 19?
3. What sound alerts Ernest and Jack that there is a ship offshore?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What mission do Fritz and Father decide not to tell the rest of the family about?
2. What disguise does Jenny adopt during her initial encounters with the family?
3. At the end of the story, who decides to stay on the island and who decides to return to Europe?
Recommended Next Reads
Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes
- This middle-grade novel tells the story of Addy, an inner-city kid spending the summer in a wilderness program. When a wildfire strikes, Addy must draw on her background and spiritual strength to lead the way to safety.
- Shared themes include The Lure of the Wild and The Importance of Faith in Survival.
- Shared topics include middle-grade fiction, adventure, stranded in the wilderness, battle for survival, determination, self-reliance, spiritual strength.
Hatchet by Gary Paulson
- Paulson’s Newbery-Honor-winning middle-grade novel tells the story of Brian, who is stranded in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash.
- Shared themes include The Lure of the Wild.
- Shared topics include middle-grade fiction, adventure, stranded in the wilderness, battle for survival, hard work, self-reliance, determination.
- Hatchet on SuperSummary
Reading Questions Answer Key
CHAPTERS 1-4
Reading Check
Short Answer
1. The ship is wedged in a stable enough position that the family has time to plan an escape and gather supplies before they abandon the ship. (Chapter 1)
2. Fritz thinks that they should not bother to look for the crew, because the crew abandoned the family. However, Father argues that it is still their moral duty to look for and aid any surviving crew members. (Chapter 3)
3. They decide to build a treehouse in a shady area where they will be protected from the sun and from wild animals such as jackals. (Chapter 4)
CHAPTERS 5-8
Reading Check
Short Answer
1. They hold a religious service and then spend the rest of the day engaged in leisure activities. (Chapter 6)
2. After they grind the cassava roots, they extract the poison these roots naturally contain. To make sure that they did this correctly, they first feed the bread to Knips and the chickens and watch to see if there are any ill effects. (Chapter 7)
3. They return to the wrecked ship day after day to work on assembling the pinnace. When they have trouble getting it off the ship and into the water, Father rigs an explosive and creates a hole in the hull so that they can get the pinnace out. (Chapter 8)
CHAPTERS 9-13
Reading Check
1. Rubber (Chapter 9)
2. A species of wild donkey (Chapter 10)
3. Athletic contests between the boys (Chapter 12)
Short Answer
1. They decide to create a staircase inside the tree. Before they can begin the long process of building the staircase, they have to figure out how to remove the colony of bees currently living there. (Chapter 10)
2. The rain during the rainy season ruined some of their supplies, and they want a more secure place to store their things during the next rainy season. (Chapter 11)
3. Jack goes into the swamp because he wants to get more sugarcane for the family, and he gets stuck in the mud there. As no one can hear his cries for help, he has to devise his own rescue: He bundles sugarcane together to create a floating platform he can use to haul himself out. (Chapter 13)
CHAPTERS 14-17
Reading Check
Short Answer
1. The donkey escapes when the family takes it out to graze and it runs into the swamp. The giant boa is there, and it kills and eats the donkey. (Chapter 14)
2. He is aware that something could easily happen to him in this wild environment and that the boys would be left to survive without his help. He hopes that letting them be independent will teach them what they need to know to survive without him. (Chapter 16)
3. While he is taking their new boat for a test sail, Fritz is caught in a storm. (Chapter 17)
CHAPTERS 18-21
Reading Check
Short Answer
1. After Fritz finds a message from “an unfortunate Englishwoman” asking for help, he and Father agree that Fritz should undertake a search and rescue mission, but they decide to keep this all a secret from the rest of the family. (Chapter 19)
2. Jenny is wearing a man’s naval uniform and pretending to be a man called Edward. (Chapter 20)
3. Fritz, Jenny, and Franz decide to return to Europe, while the rest of the family, along with some of the Unicorn’s passengers, decides to stay on the island. (Chapter 21)
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