Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

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. Every Falling Star is written as a first-person narrative memoir that borrows many literary devices from fiction.

• Why might Sungju and McClelland have decided to use this narrative style? (topic sentence)
• What are 3-4 literary devices used in Every Falling Star that are commonly found in fiction?
• In your conclusion, consider the elements of Sungju’s story that could be misconstrued as fiction and discuss how the literary devices add gravity to his story. Consider how Sungju’s story compares to the Folk Stories disseminated by the North Korean government.

2. Each character in the book places their faith somewhere.

• Pick two characters that have markedly different beliefs. Where does each character put their faith? (topic sentence)
• Compare and contrast where each character puts their faith and what that says about their personalities.