Download AMSA Summer Reading and more Summaries Literature in PDF only on Docsity!
AMSA Summer Reading - Incoming 6th Graders
Dear incoming 6th graders, Welcome to AMSA! Ms. Morin and Ms. O’Leary are very excited to read, write and discuss literature with you this year. Here are the summer reading assignments we will collect from you during the first week of school. These assignments will be your first English grades here at AMSA. “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl with Summary and Character Map
- Read “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl. Enjoy this creepy short story by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. Please reference the vocabulary sheet if you do not understand the bolded words.
- Write a summary of the story (see directions).
- Fill out a character map for either Billy Weaver or the landlady (see template). Choice Book and One-Pager
- Read a book of your choice at your reading level.
- Complete the One-Pager assignment (see directions). All assignments are due in class on Wednesday, September 7th, 2022. Happy reading! We look forward to meeting you! Sincerely, Ms. Morin and Ms. O’Leary
The Landlady Vocabulary
Directions: As you read The Landlady by Roald Dahl, you will notice words in bold. If you do not know the meaning of those words, you can use this reference sheet to help your understanding. The words are in order of their appearance in the story. All definitions come from Merriam-Webster. Lodgings - (n) Sleeping accommodations; a temporary place to stay. Briskly - (adj) Keenly alert; energetic, quick. Swanky - (adj) Characterized by showy display; fashionably elegant. Facades - (n) The front of a building. Illuminated - (v) Brightened with light. Dachshund - (n) any of a breed of long-bodied, short-legged dogs of German origin. Congenial - (adj) Pleasant; sociable. Conjured - (v) To bring to mind. Rapacious - (adj) Excessively grasping or covetous; greedy. Dithering - (v) To act nervously or indecisively. Peculiar - (adj) Different from the usual; odd. Compulsion - (n) An irresistible persistent impulse to perform an act. Dotty - (adj) Mentally unbalanced; eccentric. Applicants - (n) One who applies.
“The Landlady”
by Roald Dahl
BILLY WEAVER had traveled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Reading on the way, and by the time he got to Bath, it was about nine o’clock in the evening, and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks. “Excuse me,” he said, “but is there a fairly cheap hotel not too far away from here?” “Try The Bell and Dragon,” the porter answered, pointing down the road. “They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile along on the other side.” Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the quarter-‐mile to The Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the head office in London had told him it was a splendid town. “Find your own lodgings ,” he had said, “and then go along and report to the branch manager as soon as you’ve got yourself settled.” Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-‐blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one common characteristic of all successful businessmen. The big shots up at the head office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time. They were amazing. There were no shops on this wide street that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences. But now, even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork on their doors and windows and that the handsome white facades were cracked and blotchy from neglect. Suddenly, in a downstairs window that was brilliantly illuminated by a street lamp not six yards away, Billy caught sight of a printed notice propped up against the glass in one of the upper panes. It said BED AND BREAKFAST. There was a vase of yellow chrysanthemums, tall and beautiful, standing just underneath the notice. He stopped walking. He moved a bit closer. Green curtains (some sort of velvety material) were hanging down on either side of the window. The chrysanthemums looked wonderful beside them. He went right up and peered through the glass into the room, and the first thing he saw was a bright fire burning in the hearth. On the carpet in front of the fire, a pretty little dachshund was curled up asleep with its nose tucked into its belly. The room itself, so far as he could see in the half darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture. There was a baby grand piano and a big sofa and several plump
armchairs, and in one corner he spotted a large parrot in a cage. Animals were usually a good sign in a place like this, Billy told himself; and all in all, it looked to him as though it would be a pretty decent house to stay in. Certainly it would be more comfortable than The Bell and Dragon. On the other hand, a pub would be more congenial than a boardinghouse. There would be beer and darts in the evenings, and lots of people to talk to, and it would probably be a good bit cheaper, too. He had stayed a couple of nights in a pub once before and he had liked it. He had never stayed in any boardinghouses, and, to be perfectly honest, he was a tiny bit frightened of them. The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living room. After dithering about like this in the cold for two or three minutes, Billy decided that he would walk on and take a look at The Bell and Dragon before making up his mind. He turned to go. And now a queer thing happened to him. He was in the act of stepping back and turning away from the window when all at once his eye was caught and held in the most peculiar manner by the small notice that was there. BED AND BREAKFAST, it said. BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST. Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it, and reaching for the bell. He pressed the bell. Far away in a back room he heard it ringing, and then at once —it must have been at once because he hadn’t even had time to take his finger from the bell button—the door swung open and a woman was standing there. Normally you ring the bell and you have at least a half-‐minute’s wait before the door opens. But this dame was like a jack-‐in-‐the-‐box. He pressed the bell—and out she popped! It made him jump. She was about forty-‐five or fifty years old, and the moment she saw him, she gave him a warm, welcoming smile. “Please come in,” she said pleasantly. She stepped aside, holding the door wide open, and Billy found himself automatically starting forward. The compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house was extraordinarily strong. “I saw the notice in the window,” he said, holding himself back. “Yes, I know.” “I was wondering about a room.” “It’s all ready for you, my dear,” she said. She had a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes. “I was on my way to The Bell and Dragon,” Billy told her. “But the notice in your window just happened to catch my eye.” “My dear boy,” she said, “why don’t you come in out of the cold?” “How much do you charge?” “Five and sixpence a night, including breakfast.” It was fantastically cheap. It was less than half of what he had been willing to pay. “If that is too much,” she added, “then perhaps I can reduce it just a tiny bit. Do you desire an egg for breakfast? Eggs are expensive at the moment. It would be sixpence less without the egg.”
and we don’t want to go breaking any laws at this stage in the proceedings , do we?” She gave him a little wave of the hand and went quickly out of the room and closed the door. Now, the fact that his landlady appeared to be slightly off her rocker didn’t worry Billy in the least. After all, she not only was harmless—there was no question about that—but she was also quite obviously a kind and generous soul. He guessed that she had probably lost a son in the war, or something like that, and had never gotten over it. So a few minutes later, after unpacking his suitcase and washing his hands, he trotted downstairs to the ground floor and entered the living room. His landlady wasn’t there, but the fire was glowing in the hearth, and the little dachshund was still sleeping soundly in front of it. The room was wonderfully warm and cozy. I’m a lucky fellow, he thought, rubbing his hands. This is a bit of all right. He found the guest book lying open on the piano, so he took out his pen and wrote down his name and address. There were only two other entries above his on the page, and as one always does with guest books, he started to read them. One was a Christopher Mulholland from Cardiff. The other was Gregory W. Temple from Bristol. That’s funny, he thought suddenly. Christopher Mulholland. It rings a bell. Now where on earth had he heard that rather unusual name before? Was it a boy at school? No. Was it one of his sister’s numerous young men, perhaps, or a friend of his father’s? No, no, it wasn’t any of those. He glanced down again at the book. Christopher Mulholland 231 Cathedral Road, Cardiff Gregory W. Temple 27 Sycamore Drive, Bristol As a matter of fact, now he came to think of it, he wasn’t at all sure that the second name didn’t have almost as much of a familiar ring about it as the first. “Gregory Temple?” he said aloud, searching his memory. “Christopher Mulholland?.. .” “Such charming boys,” a voice behind him answered, and he turned and saw his landlady sailing into the room with a large silver tea tray in her hands. She was holding it well out in front of her, and rather high up, as though the tray were a pair of reins on a frisky horse. “They sound somehow familiar,” he said. “They do? How interesting.” “I’m almost positive I’ve heard those names before somewhere. Isn’t that odd? Maybe it was in the newspapers. They weren’t famous in any way, were they? I mean famous cricketers or footballers or something like that?” “Famous,” she said, setting the tea tray down on the low table in front of the sofa. “Oh no, I don’t think they were famous. But they were incredibly handsome, both of them, I can promise you that. They were tall and young and handsome, my dear, just exactly like you.” Once more, Billy glanced down at the book. “Look here,” he said, noticing the dates. “This last entry is over two years old.” “It is?” “Yes, indeed. And Christopher Mulholland’s is nearly a year before that—more than three years ago.” “Dear me,” she said, shaking her head and heaving a dainty little sigh. “I would never have thought it. How time does fly away from us all, doesn’t it, Mr. Wilkins?” “It’s Weaver,” Billy said. “W-‐e-‐a-‐v-‐e-‐r.”
“Oh, of course it is!” she cried, sitting down on the sofa. “How silly of me. I do apologize. In one ear and out the other, that’s me, Mr. Weaver.” “You know something?” Billy said. “Something that’s really quite extraordinary about all this?” “No, dear, I don’t.” “Well, you see, both of these names— Mulholland and Temple—I not only seem to remember each one of them separately, so to speak, but somehow or other, in some peculiar way, they both appear to be sort of connected together as well. As though they were both famous for the same sort of thing, if you see what I mean—like... well... like Dempsey and Tunney, for example, or Churchill and Roosevelt.” “How amusing,” she said. “But come over here now, dear, and sit down beside me on the sofa and I’ll give you a nice cup of tea and a ginger biscuit before you go to bed.” “You really shouldn’t bother,” Billy said. “I didn’t mean you to do anything like that.” He stood by the piano, watching her as she fussed about with the cups and saucers. He noticed that she had small, white, quickly moving hands and red fingernails. “I’m almost positive it was in the newspapers I saw them,” Billy said. “I’ll think of it in a second. I’m sure I will.” There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this that lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory. He hated to give up. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute. Mulholland... Christopher Mulholland..
. wasn’t that the name of the Eton schoolboy who was on a walking tour through the West Country, and then all of a sudden.. .” “Milk?” she said. “And sugar?” “Yes, please. And then all of a sudden.. .” “Eton schoolboy?” she said. “Oh no, my dear, that can’t possibly be right, because my Mr. Mulholland was certainly not an Eton schoolboy when he came to me. He was a Cambridge undergraduate. Come over here now and sit next to me and warm yourself in front of this lovely fire. Come on. Your tea’s all ready for you.” She patted the empty place beside her on the sofa, and she sat there smiling at Billy and waiting for him to come over. He crossed the room slowly and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She placed his teacup on the table in front of him. “ There we are,” she said. “How nice and cozy this is, isn’t it?” Billy started sipping his tea. She did the same. For half a minute or so, neither of them spoke. But Billy knew that she was looking at him. Her body was half turned toward him, and he could feel her eyes resting on his face, watching him over the rim of her teacup. Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person. It was not in the least unpleasant, and it reminded him—well, he wasn’t quite sure what it reminded him of. Pickled walnuts? New leather? Or was it the corridors of a hospital? At length, she said, “Mr. Mulholland was a great one for his tea. Never in my life have I seen anyone drink as much tea as dear, sweet Mr. Mulholland.” “I suppose he left fairly recently,” Billy said. He was still puzzling his head about the two names. He was positive now that he had seen them in the newspapers—in the headlines. “Left?” she said, arching her brows. “But my dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They’re on the fourth floor, both of them together.”
The Landlady Summary Activity
Directions: Read Roald Dahl’s short story The Landlady. On a separate sheet of paper, write or type a summary of the story. What is a Summary? ● A summary is a written record that identifies the most important points of a piece of writing such as a newspaper article, the chapter of a book, or even a whole book. ● A summary is written in your own words and is always shorter than the text you have read. ● A summary begins with a topic sentence that states the text’s title, author, and main subject. ● A summary should answer basic questions about the original text such as "Who did what, where, and when?", or "What is the main idea of the text?". ● A summary contains only the ideas of the original text. Do not add your opinions or commentary about the text. How do I write a Summary? ● Read the text and underline names of characters, places, and important events. ● Make notes in the margins of the text if that helps you keep track of details. ● Pay attention to the WHs - Who, What When, Why, Where, and How. ● Ask yourself what the author’s main idea is. ● Once you have all of your information, you are ready to begin writing.
Name: ____________________________
Character Map Name of character: Physical Appearance: Character’s Actions: Character’s Thoughts: Character’s Words (Quotes): Adjectives to describe the character: Character’s Portrait
