Taste of Blackberries Chapter Five Quiz

The questions for the Taste of Blackberries Chapter 5 Quiz are listed below:

1. What was Jamie's friend doing at the beginning of the chapter that caused him to have "soapy whiskers"?

2. What did Jamie's friend change his mind about when he saw his parents leaving for the funeral parlor?

3. What was surprising about Uncle Jonah's face?

4. The boy said he wanted someone to know that he went to the funeral parlor? Who did he want to know that he was there?

5. Who held the boy while he was crying at the end of the chapter?

Mourning the Loss of a Loved One

We are currently reading Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith. In this story a boy deals with the pain of losing his best friend Jamie. Jamie dies while taunting bees in their hive, not knowing that he is deathly allergic to them. Losing a best friend is not easy, and Jamie's best friend mourns the loss of his friend in many ways. Here are some of the ways we found he deals with his grief:

• remembers good times had with Jamie
• thinks of the future without Jamie
• pictures Jamie in a better place
• goes to Jamie's funeral
• doesn't sleep or eat
• denies the reality that Jamie is gone
• asks questions about what happened to Jamie

Today in class we realized that losing Jamie was so difficult for his friend because of how close their friendship was while he was still alive. Many of us have lost someone or something special to us too, and we realized that having special people in our lives means that we will at some point deal with loss. Do you have any ideas or suggestions about what to do when you lose someone or something special? Did you react like Jamie or did you mourn in other ways?