Answer Key: Ray Bradbury

Lesson Plan

II. While Reading Tasks

Vocabulary

 Scramble Words Puzzle

  1. The Martian Chronicles
  2. greatest mind
  3. truth 
  4. his imagination 
  5. fantasist
  6. Bradbury
  7. Mars 
  8. The Illustrated Man
  9. literary 
  10. magnificent

Word -Recognition 

When I was young, Bradbury was my man. I followed him to Mars, to the veldt, to the future, to the past, to the heart of America, I rode out with him on the Pequod, and on rockets. He was the first of my literary obsessions, but he set the terms of what I talked about when I talked about loving an author. I read everything of his that was in the library, which wasn’t even a quarter of what he produced. Never saw the man in person, but when I was young I had dreams where he appeared, where we spoke. Of course, like a faithful nerd, I saw “Something Wicked This Way Comes” the Friday it opened; caught François Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451” on VCR; watched “The Illustrated Man” and “The Martian Chronicles” on TV; and was a faithful viewer of “The Ray Bradbury Theater,” but none of them ever came close to the magnificent light that poured off his prose.

Questions  for Reading Comprehension

True / False

  1. T- She mentioned that she had actually visited his (Bradbury) home.
  2. F- He considered himself primarily a fantasist.
  3. T-When I was young, Bradbury was my man.
  4. F- “Something Wicked This Way Comes” opened on a Friday.
  5. F- “The Illustrated Man” and “The Martian Chronicles”  were written by Ray Bradbury.
  6. F-And then there was his story “All Summer in a Day,” a perennial middle-school favorite.
  7. F- I remember reading that story very young, when I was still wrestling with English.
  8. F- I read that short tale, and when I came to those ruthless final lines I was shattered by them.
  9. T- I had never known what I’d been experiencing as an immigrant, never had language for it until I read that story.
  10. T- It was my first real taste of the power of fiction.

IV. Listening Activity 

 Video Clip: NEA Big Read: Meet Ray Bradbury

While Listening Task

 True / False statements

  1. F- He learned to read when he was 3 years-old.
  2. T- He  loved comic strips and  he loved  the cartoons on Sunday.
  3. T- He got a book on fairy tales at 5 years- old.
  4. T-He loved fairy tales like like Beauty and the Beast and Jack and the beanstalk.
  5. F- And by the time he was 3 years-old he saw his first movie he  saw was  the Hunch back of Notre Dame,  and he hoped  to grow up to become a  a hunchback.
  6. F- When he was 5 years  he saw the Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney.
  7. T- He became infatuated with Lon Chaney.
  8. T-When  he was 6  he saw a film on dinosaurs. and they infected his whole life.
  9. T- He was 7 years-old  when he went to the library for the first time.
  10. T- Some authors he named were:  Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Emily Dickerson, Edgar Allan Poe,and Robert Frost.
  11. F- The Martian Chronicles was based on the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
  12. F-  At 12 years-old he  looked at the planet Mars he said “take me home” and they did…
  13. T- When he was 12 he  saw a carnival where he met the Illustrated man.
  14. T-  He thought that if he kept writing he could live forever.