73 pages 2 hours read

Daniel Woodrell

Winter's Bone

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006

A 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 does poverty become a cyclical problem that affects families for generations?

Teaching Suggestion: The main characters experience poverty that spans generations. Students might start with a journal exploring what they know about poverty. Then, the class could study these resources. Reading them in the order listed here would start with a focus on rural America and expand the focus to how this topic applies to the larger world. Analyzing the visuals in the Institute for Research on Poverty’s site can be an entry point. After reading, students might add to their journals or discuss key ideas. If time allows, this topic could expand to a research project.

  • This resource from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty includes graphs and other images as well as written analysis of poverty in rural America.
  • Report: Rural Poverty In America Is ‘An Emergency’” from NPR explains how the United States compares to other countries based on child poverty and focuses on an analysis of rural poverty.