1. Rachel Field was inspired to write Hitty: Her First Hundred Years after she and her friend Dorothy Lathrop found just such a wooden doll in an antique shop. How would you have written the story? Would you have written it from the point of view of the doll or of someone else? Would you have the doll stay with one family and concentrate on a few adventures? After considering these and other questions which may occur to you, try writing a few chapters of your own story of a doll.

2. Why was the whaling industry so important in the nineteenth century?

Write a report on this enterprise. If you have seen the New England whaling ports, be sure to include your observations about them. In the light of your research, does Rachel Field's description of the Diana-Kate seem authentic?

3. Only...