Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be? Why?

Teaching Suggestion: Frank Abagnale frequently chooses professions that are seen as having a certain degree of prestige and importance, and which confer the status he craves. Encourage students to think deeply about profession as a status symbol.

• This article from Forbes reports on the most respected jobs (scientists, farmers, doctors, firefighters, teachers, nurses, and members of the military).

2. What are some examples of short stories or novels with unreliable narrators?

Teaching Suggestion: Frank Abagnale is, in many ways, an unreliable narrator. He is a con man, and there has been some controversy over the truth of his fantastical claims, such as his accounts of scamming Pan Am out of millions of dollars and of working as a resident supervisor. Prepare students to think critically about how he presents himself in this memoir.

• This article from Book Riot lists fifty books with an unreliable narrator.
• “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, provides one example of an unreliable narrator.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Who do you want to be? What would you do to become this person?

Teaching Suggestion: Frank has an image of himself throughout this memoir and, when he is arrested in France, he comforts himself by thinking about himself as a real pilot.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with limited English proficiency might respond to the prompt by drawing a picture and briefly describing a few goals.