Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction

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 bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Though much of Hey, Kiddo focuses on familial ties, he also states that good friends can become family.

• Why is Pat’s role important in the memoir? (topic sentence)
• Describe how Pat and Krosoczka became friends, why Pat is an important friend to Krosoczka, and how Pat became like family to Krosoczka.
• In your concluding sentences explain why Krosoczka’s portrayal of Pat is different from his portrayal of his own family.

2. Jarrett, as an artist, often writes his adult thoughts over pictures of his younger self doing things unrelated to his adult perspective.

• How does Jarrett’s perspective as an adult contrast with his younger perspective? (topic sentence)
• Describe why Jarrett reflects on his life from the perspective of an adult, why he contrasts this perspective with his younger self, and how the differences in perspective demonstrate Jarrett’s growth in the memoir.