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Prologue and Part One: Chapters 1-3

• The following version of this book was used to create this Lesson Plan: Whitehead, Colson. The Nickel Boys. 2019. Doubleday Books, E-book.

• The Prologue begins and its first line states that "Even in death, the boys were trouble" (3).

• A University of South Florida student named Jody discovered the "secret graveyard" (3) on the north side of Nickel Academy's property.

• The archaeology students had been working to excavate the official cemetery on Nickels’ grounds, a place former inmates of Nickel had called Boot Hill.

• Note: Former inmates of Nickel Academy are referred to as Nickel Boys throughout the narrative, while the juvenile detention facility itself is represented with the single term “Nickel” (3).

• The narrator mentions that a group of young inmates had been killed in a dormitory fire at Nickel in 1921 and that some of these boys’ remains were found by the archaeology students in...

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