Discussion questions for News of the World by Paulette Jiles

1. 1. Why did Captain Kidd become a newsreader?  Aside from earning a living, what does he get out of it?
   2. Why do you think Captain Kidd agreed to take Johanna back to her white family?
   3. Captain Kidd is based on an actual historical figure.  Does that change how you think about the character?
   4. Would you be surprised to learn that this book was published fairly recently, in 2016?  Why or why not?
   5. This book has some elements of a traditional Western (i.e. setting, time period, cowboys and Indians, etc.) and in an interview with the Washington Independent Review of Books, Jiles says that the book is a “classic western”.  Did you approach it as a “western” novel?  Did your opinion change as you read?
   6. Jiles’s research was cited as “meticulous” and “substantial”.  Is the level of research she put into the book obvious in the story?
   7. What did you think of Jiles’s decision not to use quotation marks?  Did it detract from the story, or did you find that removing that piece of punctuation helped the story flow?
   8. What did you think of the last chapter?  Did the tone seem different than the rest of the story?  Did you want more details about what happened to the characters?
   9. News of the World was a National Book Award Finalist in 2016.  The winner that year was Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.  The other finalists were The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder, The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan, and Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson.  Have you read any of these other books?  Do you think that News of the World deserved its finalist status?  Should it have won?
   10. Did you see the movie based on this book with Tom Hanks?  Discuss some of the differences between the movie and the book.  Why do you think the movie team chose to diverge in some places?  Do the differences add to or detract from the story?
   11. Britt Johnson is the subject of Jiles’s earlier book, The Color of Lighting and Simon’s backstory is told in Jiles’s newer book, Simon the Fiddler.  Have you read either of these books?  How do they compare to News of the World.  If you haven’t read one or both of them, do you want to, now that you’ve read News of the World?

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