INTERACTIVE READ ALOUD
Read aloud questions
1. The Spots/Dots live in pods on one side of the hill.
→ Crawl under a table or blanket and pretend you’re a Spot/Dot inside a pod!
2. The Spots/Dots love to bounce very high.
→ How high can you bounce?
3. One of the Spots/Dots has lost her pacifier.
→ Can you find it?
4. The mummies and daddies say, “Whatever you do, don’t go over the hill!”
→ Why do you think they say that?
→ What do you think is over the hill?
5. The Spots and Dots seem scared of one another, even though they’ve never met.
→ How do the Spots/Dots imagine the other
→ Do you think this is really what they look like?
6. On the page with the net, the story says, “Everyone knew that the Dots/Spots were bad through and through.”
→ Do you think it’s possible to be bad through and through?
7. The Spots/Dots play a game where some of them pretend to be the bad “other,” and they battle one another to win.
→ What do you notice about the masks they made for this game?
→ Why do you think they play this kind of game?
8. Sometimes we use our imagination and play games to help us understand things that feel scary.
→ Have you ever done that?
9. Baby Spot/Dot climbs to the top of the hill.
→ What do you think will happen next?
10. Baby Spot/Dot sees another “small someone” on the other side.
→ How are they looking at each other?
→ What do you think they might be thinking?
11. The baby Spot and the baby Dot stare in surprise as “the world starts to change.”
→ What do you think that means?
→ How is the world changing?
→ Do you think they will become friends?
12. In the middle of the book, all of the Spots and Dots are friends. They share the hill, and no one is scared.
→ How did they realize that they were all friendly and not scary?
→ Do you think they were happier before they became friends or after?
13. At the end, the Spots and Dots realize that once they met and talked, they weren’t enemies at all.
→ Have you ever felt nervous about something just because it was new or unfamiliar?
→ Why is it important to talk to someone and get to know them before deciding if they’re “good or bad”?
14. This book can be read from either side. One tells the Spots’ point of view, and the other tells the Dots’. They both meet in the middle, on the same page, where everyone is together.
→ Why do you think the author chose to make the book this way?
