Part 7
The state oratorical contest arrives, and Mr. McShane drives Susan and Leo to Phoenix while her parents follow in their own car. On the way she admits that Dori Dilson is angry with her — not for losing a contest, but for losing herself, for trading Stargirl away in the hope of being liked. The April desert is blooming, and when they pull over she hears a mockingbird and remembers one of Archie’s strange, beautiful ideas about what such a bird might be carrying in its borrowed songs. At the competition she abandons her prepared speech entirely and improvises, weaving Barney the fossil skull, Cinnamon, and the dying of the sun into a talk she calls ‘I Might Have Heard a Moa.’ She reaches the finals, opens with a spin and a curtsy, and speaks so simply and so strangely that the hall goes silent — then erupts. She wins. There are television cameras, a silver plate she carries everywhere, a front-page write-up, strangers wanting to talk to her. All the way home she imagines the welcome waiting at Mica High. What waits is an almost empty parking lot: two teachers, and Dori holding one small homemade sign. By Monday Susan is gone. Stargirl is back — ukulele, long dress, a tray of happy-face cookies — and Hillari Kimble grinds one under her heel while Leo, ashamed, says nothing at all.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Contest & consequence words: oratorical, improvise, ovation, shun, authentic… |
| Literary Elements | Situational irony, the turning point of the novel, and the empty lot as symbol |
| Cross-Curricular | Mockingbirds and vocal mimicry — the desert bird that sings in borrowed songs |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Chapters 27–28 | The Road to Phoenix — Mr. McShane drives Susan and Leo to the state contest; she hears a mockingbird in the blooming desert, then throws away her prepared speech, improvises, and wins the finals to a roaring ovation. |
| Chapters 29–30 | An Empty Parking Lot — television, a silver plate, a front-page story — and then a homecoming of two teachers and one small sign; by Monday Stargirl is back, and Hillari crushes her cookie underfoot. |
Three of these words are about performing and one is about a bird. Oratorical has to do with formal public speaking, which is what takes Susan to Phoenix and the state contest. To mimic is to copy the sound or manner of another — a mockingbird can do dozens of other birds, and the novel puts that fact in front of you at exactly the moment a girl is copying a school. To improvise is to make something up on the spot, without preparation, and it is what she chooses to do instead of reading the speech she came with. Eloquent means speaking in a fluent, moving, persuasive way, and she is: the hall goes silent. Then she drives home a state champion and finds an empty parking lot waiting for her, which is exactly the point of putting the mockingbird in the same chapter.
ⓘ 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.
The narrative’s growing tension gives way to a crucial revelation and redirects the story’s direction. The state oratorical contest arrives, and Mr. McShane drives Susan and Leo to Phoenix while her parents follow in their own car. On the way she admits that Dori Dilson is angry with her — not for losing a contest, but for losing herself, for trading Stargirl away in the hope of being liked. The April desert is blooming, and when they pull over she hears a mockingbird and remembers one of Archie’s strange, beautiful ideas about what such a bird might be carrying in its borrowed songs. At the competition she abandons her prepared speech entirely and improvises, weaving Barney the fossil skull, Cinnamon, and the dying of the sun into a talk she calls ‘I Might Have Heard a Moa.’ The accumulated tension makes “The Prize and the Empty Lot” a genuine story threshold.
- She wins the state title to a roaring ovation.
- Mr. McShane drives Susan and Leo toward Phoenix.
- She comes home to two teachers and one small sign.
- Stargirl returns on Monday, and Hillari crushes her cookie.
- She throws out her speech and improvises instead.
As the story nears its end, irony, symbol, and point turn earlier details into consequences. Part 7 is built on situational irony — the gap between what we expect to happen and what actually does. Everything is arranged for triumph. A state title, a silver plate, television lights, a newspaper front page, a girl rehearsing her own homecoming out loud in the car: Spinelli lets the expectation swell for two full chapters. Then the car turns into the school lot and there is almost no one there. Two teachers. One handmade sign in Dori Dilson’s hands. The irony bites twice over. Susan wins the very prize she believed would buy her the crowd’s love, and the winning changes nothing — and she wins it, note carefully, by throwing away her careful, ordinary speech and improvising something wildly strange, which is to say she wins by being Stargirl at the exact moment she is trying hardest not to be. That authorial design makes “A Win That Feels Like a Loss” a lesson in deliberate structure.
Susan did everything the crowd seemed to demand. She put away the ukulele, dressed like everyone else, answered to an ordinary name, and then went out and won a state championship — and Mica High still would not have her. Psychologists studying social rejection have found this pattern again and again, and it explains her empty parking lot. Once a group has decided to exclude someone, the exclusion tends to harden into an identity the group holds about that person, and later changes in behavior are read as proof of the original judgment rather than as reasons to revise it: see, she was faking all along. Worse, the effort itself is costly. Studies of people who spend their days managing how they come across find real exhaustion in it — the work of monitoring yourself never stops, and it drains the attention you would otherwise spend on anything else. Susan paid that price for weeks and got nothing, because there was never anyone at Mica willing to let it succeed.
Picture the drive home from Phoenix. A silver plate sits in a girl’s lap, and she keeps touching it. She has been on television. Her face is on a front page. She has spent the whole trip describing out loud the welcome that must be waiting — the noise, the banners, the crowd finally, finally turning her way. The car swings into the school lot and slows, and then simply stops, because there is nothing to drive toward. Sun, gravel, painted lines, two teachers standing awkwardly, and one girl holding a small handmade sign that shakes a little in her hands. Nobody in the car says anything. The proof of everything she wanted is right there in her lap, and it has bought her exactly one friend she already had.
- SATCentral Ideas — the main point of the passage as a whole
- TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated directly in the passage
- SATDetail — a fact the passage states directly
- SATWords in Context — what a word means the way this passage uses it
- TOEFLVocabulary — the meaning of a tested word as this passage uses it
- SATText Connections — how two texts, or two parts of one text, speak to each other
The bird Susan hears in the blooming April desert is a northern mockingbird, one of the finest singers in North America. Plain gray and easy to overlook, it is famous for one astonishing talent: it copies. A mockingbird learns the songs of the birds around it — cardinals, wrens, jays — and does not stop there; frogs, insects, car alarms, and barking dogs also find their way in. A single male may command well over a hundred distinct song types, adding to that collection all his life, so an older bird carries a more varied repertoire than a young one.
Why would evolution build a bird out of other creatures’ voices? The leading explanation is courtship: the song is an advertisement, and its length and variety are the measure of the singer. A male who performs an enormous range of borrowed sounds is demonstrating memory, sharp hearing, years of survival, and the health to sing for hours from an exposed perch. Importantly, the copying is not mindless playback. The mockingbird arranges its stolen material into phrases, repeats each one several times, and improvises transitions, so a listener who knows the pattern identifies it instantly.
That is the paradox worth carrying into the novel: a mockingbird borrows every note it sings and is still, unmistakably, itself, because the arrangement and daring are its own. Archie’s musings go further, imagining a bird passing down calls from species long vanished — a lovely speculation, not a fact. Susan spent months attempting the opposite experiment: she put her own songs away and lived inside an elaborate imitation of everyone else, and the result was not a richer performance but silence. The mockingbird thrives by adding other voices to its own; Susan tried to replace hers, and nearly lost the only song she had.
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 “The Prize That Changed Nothing”
Susan wins a state championship and comes home to an almost empty parking lot. Write about a time you worked hard for something — approval, a place on a team, a friendship — and the reward did not arrive, or did not feel the way you expected. What did you give up along the way? 6–10 sentences. End with what you would tell someone about to trade away something of their own to be liked.
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 Chapters 27–30 of Stargirl.
Here are your auto-graded results:
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 Jerry Spinelli. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Jerry Spinelli’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.