How To Eat Fried Worms

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. At the end of the story, Billy gets his minibike and rides it down to the river to meet his friends.

• What does the desire for a minibike symbolize, and how might it be influenced by the book’s setting? (topic sentence)
• Choose three mentions of the minibike as a motivator for Billy to keep eating worms and connect them back to your argument.
• Finally, in your concluding sentence or sentences, describe how the minibike illustrates Billy’s development as a character.

2. Joe and Alan’s attempts to sabotage Billy grow increasingly tricky in nature.

• How do their antics illustrate their growing desperation to win the bet? (topic sentence)
• Using three supporting examples from the text, show how their treatment of Billy changes as it becomes more and more likely that Billy will win the bet.
• Finally, in your concluding sentence or sentences, explain how Joe and Alan’s behavior relates to the theme of The Fine Line Between Honor and Cheating.

3. Rockwell names several chapters after battles or key moments in World War II.

• Why does he do this? How do the war references connect to the plot of How to Eat Fried Worms? (topic sentence)
• How is the bet like a battle in this novel? Choose at least three examples from the text to support your answer.
• Finally, in your concluding sentence or sentences, explain how the story expresses the theme of the Parallels Between Life and War.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Consider Billy’s assertion that it is not the worms that taste bad but the idea of eating worms. What does this mean? How does it connect to his character development throughout the rest of the novel? Use at least three examples from the text to support your answers, and connect Billy’s statement to the theme of Overcoming and Learning Through Challenges. What has Billy learned by eating so many worms?

2. Tom and Joe are similar in that they both are willing to lie or bend the rules more than Billy or Alan is. What do their roles on opposing sides of the bet suggest about The Fine Line Between Honor and Cheating? Provide at least three examples from the text comparing and contrasting the two boys and the role that each one plays in the novel.

3. Two opposing sides immediately form in this novel, with Billy and Tom on one side and Alan and Joe on the other. Rockwell even refers to several military officers and events from World War II as he tells the story of Billy’s quest to eat 15 worms. How do events escalate to the point where the boys engage in physical fighting? Why does Rockwell link real-life military events to a story about kids? What might he be suggesting about childhood and friendship by pitting these friends against one another? Connect your ideas to the theme of the Parallels Between Life and War.