Book excerpt: The questions and activities in this Curriculum Unit for teaching from the middle-grade novel, "The Orange Slipknot," have been designed to help the teacher guide students in learning and incorporating these important reading strategies: making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, determining importance, and synthesizing. Instead of reading for content only, students will learn how to look beyond the words for meaning. They will learn to see that there are many layers of meaning in books. They will learn how to think about reading, and hopefully, to develop a love for reading. For each chapter, there are comprehension questions, writing prompts, discussions prompts, journaling prompts, and vocabulary activities. Various question/answer formats are used, with an emphasis on writing. Following the chapter activities, there are strong cross-curricular connections: literature links, reading, math, science, art, social studies, and geography. Questions and activities range from fourth to ninth grade levels. Extensive use is made of internet research. A teacher may wish to pick and choose from the large selection of questions and activities. Answer keys are in the back. The in-depth section on Nevada, stressing agriculture, makes The Orange Slipknot an excellent social studies tool. Since this Curriculum Unit is written by the author herself, the teacher and the students benefit by gaining insight into the writer?s mind. The elements which the author feels are important about the story and the writing process are emphasized.