VOCABULARY for Stargirl
Part I: Below are sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence. Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, then look on the back at the definitions to determine what each vocabulary word means. Then, decide what the best context clues are for each vocabulary word.
1. “Well then,” he said, “I’ll sign her up.” He walked away. “You’ll have to find another director, then,” I said…. We conceived Hot Seat together and convinced the faculty to let us do it. It was an instant hit. It quickly became the most popular thing in school. So why was I balking? I didn’t know. I had some vague feelings, but the only one I could identify was a warning: Leave her alone. (pages 13 - 14)
2. She said there was no television in her house. She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her.
3. When Halloween arrived, everyone in her homeroom found a candy pumpkin on his or her desk. No one had to ask who did it. By then most of us had decided that we liked having her around. We found ourselves looking forward to coming to school, to seeing what bizarre antic she’d be up to. She gave us something to talk about. She was entertaining. (pages 25 - 26)
4. Wayne Parr came in and sat several tables away, as if even he was afraid of her on this day. Stargirl finally came in. She went straight to the food line, blithely smiling as usual. Both she and Hillari seemed unaware of each other. (page 28)
5. Nor would you know that inches below your feet, frogs are sleeping, their heartbeats down to once or twice per minute. They lie dormant and waiting, these mud frogs, for without water their lives are incomplete, they are not fully themselves. For many months they sleep like this within the earth. And then the rain comes. And a hundred pairs of eyes pop out of the mud, and at night a hundred voices call across the moonlit water. (page 40)
6. He hung in there as well as he could. He scored his points, but he kept falling farther and farther behind. The opposition was better, quicker, keener. In the championship game, our boy got annihilated. Not only didn’t he show up for class the next day, he never showed up, period. They never saw him again. (page 75)
7. “No,” she said, “that’s not all. There’s also the place where I get my hair cut. I always overhear good stuff there. And of course there’re bulletin boards. Do you know how many bulletin boards there are in town?” “Sure,” I said facetiously, I count them every day.” “So do I,” she said, not kidding. “So far, I’m up to forty-one.” (page 113)
8. The next day I faced the full impact of the sign. I thought I had truly suffered from the spillover of Stargirl’s shunning, but that was nothing now that the full torrent was turned on me. Of course Kevin–thankfully–talked to me; so did a few other friends. But the rest was silence, a second desert imposed upon the one I already lived in, where “Hi” was as rare as rain. (page 131)
Part II: Match the vocabulary words to their dictionary definitions.
_____ 1. balking A. asleep or inactive
_____ 2. elusive B. flippantly; treating something serious with humor
_____ 3. antic C. prank or amusing behavior
_____ 4. blithely D. destroyed; wiped out
_____ 5. dormant E. being reluctant; resisting
_____ 6. annihilated F. a sudden, violent outpouring of something
_____ 7. facetiously G. casually; in an unworried manner
_____ 8. torrent H. hard to understand or define