Our teacher discussion guide for The Last to Let Go, a great coming-of-age novel about a girl experiencing many of life's firsts, contains various questions and activities to help guide your lesson. Our discussion questions will help students relate to the main characters and think critically about their situation. The extension activities focus on helping students create and maintain healthy relationships, find ways to aid the community, and learn more about the pyschological effects of life-changing events.
Excerpted from
The Last to Let Go
Junior year for Brooke Winters is supposed to be about change. She’s transferring schools, starting fresh, and making plans for college so she can finally leave her hometown, her family, and her past behind.But all of her dreams are shattered one hot summer afternoon when her mother is arrested for killing Brooke’s abusive father. No one really knows what happened that day, if it was premeditated or self-defense, whether it was right or wrong. And now Brooke and her siblings are on their own. In a year of firsts—the first year without parents, first love, first heartbreak, and her first taste of freedom—Brooke must confront the shadow of her family’s violence and dysfunction, as she struggles to embrace her identity, finds her true place in the world, and learns how to let go.
