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Julie of the Wolves · Garden Heights
Part 7
for Julie of the Wolves · Part 7 · Part III · The Airplane
8 Parts40 min
What Happens in Part 7
The outside world finally arrives on the North Slope, and it arrives in an aircraft. Men with rifles shoot Amaroq from the air and leave him where he falls — not for meat, not for fur, not for a bounty, but for sport. Kapu is wounded in the same pass. Miyax, who learned the pack’s language well enough to be fed by it, is powerless on the ground. Afterwards she does the only useful thing available: she stitches Kapu’s wound under the aurora with the needles she still has, and he lives. Grief and competence run in the same scene, which is how this book has always worked.
What We Will Learn
Section
What you will practice
Vocabulary
Words for loss and repair: aurora, bounty, sterile, suture, futile…
Literary Elements
A death that is sudden and unjust; grief shown as work rather than speech
Cross-Curricular
Aerial hunting, bounty laws, and how the northern lights are made
Scene Summary
Scene
What happens
Shot from the sky
An aircraft comes low over the tundra carrying men with rifles. They shoot Amaroq from the air, and they do not land to take him; the killing is done for sport rather than for meat or fur or bounty. Kapu is wounded in the same pass. Miyax, who has spent the whole summer learning to speak to this animal, can do nothing at all from the ground, and the wolf who accepted her is simply gone.
Under the northern lights
She turns to the living. Working outside beneath the aurora, she cleans Kapu’s wound and stitches it with the needles Jello left her, using the skill her father taught her. Grief and work go on side by side, and Kapu lives. Something has changed all the same: the world she was hiding from can reach her here, and it arrives with an engine.
Part 1
Vocabulary
Study 10 key words from Part III · The Airplane, then answer each question.
🧵Knowledge Bank · Words for Loss and Repair
Language · Words of Grief and WorkThis part needs two vocabularies at once, and it uses them in the same scene. On the loss side, senseless means done for no reason that makes sense, which is the exact charge the novel lays against the shooting, and futile means certain to fail, which is what any protest from the ground would be. To mourn is to feel and show deep sorrow. On the work side, a suture is a single stitch closing a wound, sterile means free of germs (a standard nothing on the open tundra actually meets), and to improvise is to make what you need from whatever is to hand. Notice that the book gives Miyax more working words than grieving ones. That is a deliberate measure of how she survives it. Grief in this novel is almost always reported through what a person does next rather than through what they say, so the working words are carrying the feeling as well as the task. Watch what she does with her hands.
auroran.Pt.III
The colored light that appears in polar skies at night
“She worked by the light of the aurora.”
bountyn.Pt.III
Money paid by a government for killing a particular animal
“For decades a bounty was paid for every wolf.”
suturen.Pt.III
A stitch used to close a wound
“Each suture had to be pulled tight but not tearing.”
sterileadj.Pt.III
Completely free of germs
“Nothing on the tundra was truly sterile.”
futileadj.Pt.III
Certain to fail; pointless
“Shouting at an aircraft is futile.”
senselessadj.Pt.III
Done without any reason that makes sense
“The killing was senseless, and that is the point.”
carcassn.Pt.III
The body of a dead animal
“They left the carcass lying where it fell.”
persistv.Pt.III
To keep going despite difficulty
“She had to persist while her hands shook.”
mournv.Pt.III
To feel and show deep sorrow for something lost
“She mourns Amaroq while she works on Kapu.”
improvisev.Pt.III
To make something from whatever is at hand
“She had to improvise a dressing from what she carried.”
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
1The colored light seen in polar skies at night is the ___.Pt.III
2Money paid by a government for killing a particular animal is a ___.Pt.III
3A suture is a stitch used to close a wound.Pt.III
4Something certain to fail and therefore pointless is ___.Pt.III
5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Pt.III
Word choices:sterileimproviseabandonpersist- some words will not be used
Something completely free of germs is .
To is to make something from whatever is at hand.
6To mourn is to feel and show deep sorrow for something you have lost.Pt.III
7To keep going despite difficulty is to ___.Pt.III
8Something senseless is done for a very good and obvious reason.Pt.III
9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Pt.III
Word choices:aurorabountyharvestmourn- some words will not be used
The colored light in a polar sky is the .
Money paid by a government for killing an animal is a .
10To make something from whatever is at hand is to ___.Pt.III
Part 2
Comprehension
Show you understood what happens in Part III · The Airplane.
✈Knowledge Bank · Hunting from the Air, and the Bounty Years
History · Wolves and the LawThe scene reflects real history. For much of the twentieth century wolves in North America were hunted under a bounty system, in which a government paid a fixed sum for every animal killed, on the theory that fewer wolves meant more caribou and safer livestock. Aircraft made this dramatically easier: a plane can find and follow a pack across open tundra in a way no person on foot ever could, and aerial shooting became widespread. By the time this novel was published in 1972, the science had turned. Studies showed that wolves mostly take the old, the sick and the young, and that removing them can leave a caribou herd less healthy rather than more, so bounties were withdrawn and aerial hunting sharply restricted across most of the continent. What George puts in front of the reader is a killing that had already stopped being even officially useful.
1How does Amaroq die?Pt.III
2Why is the killing described as senseless?Pt.III
3Which other wolf is hurt in the same pass?Pt.III
4What does Miyax do for Kapu afterwards?Pt.III
5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events in this part. Number 1 = what happens first.Pt.III
Amaroq is shot from the air and left where he falls.
Kapu survives, and Miyax is left to mourn Amaroq.
An aircraft comes low over the tundra carrying men with rifles.
Miyax cleans and stitches Kapu’s wound beneath the northern lights.
Kapu is wounded in the same pass.
6The men land and take Amaroq’s body away with them.Pt.III
7What tools does Miyax use to treat Kapu?Pt.III
8Miyax is able to stop the shooting from the ground.Pt.III
9What has changed for Miyax by the end of this part?Pt.III
10Kapu survives his wound.Pt.III
Part 3
Literary Elements
Understanding HOW and WHY Jean Craighead George tells the story across Part III · The Airplane.
🖤Knowledge Bank · A Death the Book Refuses to Prepare You For
Literary Craft · Sudden LossMost novels signal a major death. There is a last conversation, a foreboding image, a chapter that slows down. Jean Craighead George does none of it: an engine appears, a rifle fires, and the animal at the center of the whole book is dead within a paragraph. That refusal is the technique. A prepared death lets a reader begin grieving early and arrive at the loss already braced; an unprepared one lands the way real loss does, with the reader still expecting the story to continue as it was. Notice too that the killers are never characters. They have no names, no faces and no argument, so there is nobody for the reader to blame properly and no conversation that could have gone differently. The book denies us the comfort of an explanation, and that denial is the whole point of the scene.
A death without warning
Amaroq is killed suddenly, from off the page, by people who never appear as characters. The novel refuses to build up to it, which is what makes it feel like the real thing.
Grief shown as work
Miyax does not make a speech. She cleans a wound and sews it. The book measures feeling by what a person does next.
The outside world as an engine
For six parts the tundra has been a closed world. The aircraft is the first thing in the book that arrives from outside it, and it changes what the story is about.
1Amaroq being killed by people who never become characters mainly ___.Pt.III
2Fill in each blank with the correct term.Pt.III
Word choices:climaxresolutionrhymestanza- some words will not be used
The moment of highest tension in a story is its .
The settling of the story afterwards is its .
3Showing Miyax stitching a wound instead of grieving aloud is a way of ___.Pt.III
4The aircraft is the first thing in the book to arrive from outside the tundra.Pt.III
5The novel builds up slowly to Amaroq’s death with plenty of warning.Pt.III
6Kapu being wounded rather than killed matters because ___.Pt.III
7Fill in the blank with the correct term.Pt.III
Word choices:ironyrhymechaptersetting- some words will not be used
A gap between what is expected and what happens is .
8The northern lights are used here mainly as pretty scenery.Pt.III
9Naming the wounded pup Kapu, after her father, makes his survival ___.Pt.III
10This part mostly works to ___.Pt.III
Part 4
Think Deeper
Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.
⚖Knowledge Bank · Killing for Nothing
Ethics · What Makes a Killing WrongThe novel is careful to strip away every justification before it lets the reader judge. These men do not need meat. They are not protecting livestock. They collect no fur, and there is no bounty waiting. They do not even land to look at what they shot. Almost every ethical framework a reader might bring will condemn this, and it is worth noticing why they agree for different reasons: one asks whether the act produced any good and finds none, another asks whether it respected a living creature and finds it did not, and a third asks what kind of person does it for fun. Subsistence hunting, which this book treats with real respect, meets all three tests and this fails all three. The distinction the novel draws is not between killing and not killing but between need and amusement.
Think back over this part. An engine comes out of the sky over a place that had felt sealed off from everything. A rifle fires twice. The animal that accepted a starving girl into his family is dead on the ground and nobody lands to collect him, because collecting him was never the point. And a thirteen-year-old, who can do nothing at all about any of it, kneels down under the northern lights and sews up the one she can still save.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Claim: “This part argues that survival skill cannot protect Miyax from the human world.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence
2Something Miyax can control, or Something entirely outside her control? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two
◄ Something Miyax can controlSomething entirely outside her control ►
3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect
An aircraft crosses the slope with armed men aboard→
Kapu is wounded in the same pass→
Jello did not take the needles→
The outside world reaches the tundra→
4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument
According to the passage, bounties were withdrawn mainly because , which shows that .
Part 5
Standardized Test
Reading passage · Why the Bounties Were Withdrawn · Words in Context & Central Ideas · SAT & TOEFL-style practice
🎯 What this section practices
You already have these skills from the sections above — here they appear in the exact question types the SAT and TOEFL use. Read the passage (the highlighted words are tested below), then answer. Tap an answer to select it, then tap it again to confirm — you can change your choice until you confirm.
SATCentral Ideas — the main point of the passage as a whole
TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated directly in the passage
SATWords in Context — what a word means the way this passage uses it
SATInference — a conclusion the passage supports without ever stating it outright
The Failed Wolf Bounty Experiment
For most of the twentieth century, governments across North America paid a bounty for dead wolves. The reasoning seemed obvious: wolves eat caribou and deer, so fewer wolves should mean more of both, and ranchers would lose fewer animals. Payments ran for decades, and aircraft eventually made the hunting far easier.
The evidence did not cooperate. Biologists studying which animals wolves actually take found that a pack rarely catches a healthy adult in its prime; what it catches is the old, the young, the sick and the injured, because those are the animals it can run down. Removing wolves therefore does not simply add caribou. It changes which caribou survive, allowing weak animals to breed and disease to spread more easily through a herd that is no longer being culled by anything.
Longer studies added a second finding. Herds without predators can grow beyond what the land can feed, strip the slow-growing lichen they depend on, and then crash far harder than they would have otherwise. Ecologists began describing the wolf as a regulator of the system rather than a competitor within it. Wildlife agencies that had spent decades paying for dead wolves found themselves reading their own data and reaching the opposite conclusion. By the 1970s most bounties had been repealed and aerial hunting sharply restricted, not because attitudes to wolves had softened but because the policy had been measured and had failed on its own terms.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas
2According to the passage, what do wolves mostly catch?TOEFL · Factual Information
3As used in the passage, bounty most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
4The passage says aircraft affected wolf hunting by ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
5It can be inferred that removing wolves changes a herd because ___.SAT · Inference
6As used in the passage, culled most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
7According to the passage, herds without predators may ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
8By what decade had most bounties been repealed?TOEFL · Factual Information
9The last sentence suggests the change happened mainly because ___.SAT · Inference
10As used in the passage, regulator most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
Part 6 · Optional
Creative Writing
A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.
About This Section
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 7 “When Skill Is Not Enough”
Miyax can read a wolf pack, build a shelter and stitch a wound, and none of it helps when the aircraft comes. Write about a time you were good at something and it still was not enough, or about something you could not control however hard you tried. What did you do next? 5–8 sentences. End with one thing that helps when a situation is out of your hands.
You can start with: “One thing that helps when a situation is out of your hands is...”
0 / 40 words minimum
🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)
No right or wrong — tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 7 Complete!
You finished Part III · The Airplane of Julie of the Wolves.
Here are your auto-graded results:
-
points out of 100
🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)
Teach it to someone
The best last step is to teach it. In your own words, explain what happened — retell a favorite scene, teach a character’s big choice, or sum up the main idea for a parent, friend, or classmate. When you can teach it clearly, you truly own it.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Jean Craighead George. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Jean Craighead George’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.
