55 pages • 1 hour read
Betty G. BirneyThe World According to Humphrey
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Before Reading
Reading Context
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. How do other animals—like cats, dogs, and birds—perceive the world? What unique traits, characteristics, or abilities allow them to understand it differently when compared to humans?
Teaching Suggestion: The World According to Humphrey is told from the perspective of a hamster. As a hamster, Humphrey is biologically different from a human narrator, but he also gains access to the students’ lives at home, thus giving him a unique perspective on why certain students act the way they do. This contributes to the book’s core themes of Finding One’s Place and Judging Others. To help generate discussion and student engagement, consider starting the task with a brainstorm exercise in which students list as many different types of animals as they can think of. Alternatively, you might ask students to identify their favorite animals and then have them consider the world from those animals’ perspectives.
- “How Do Other Animals See the World?” from the Natural History Museum in the UK talks about the core differences in how animals perceive the environment around them.
