• What is courage?
• Is it wrong to eat other living creatures?
• What do we owe to our communities?
• How do we balance the importance of individual choice and the need to conform to community norms?
• What does it mean to belong?

Epistemology

• How do we gain knowledge?
• What do we need in order to think for ourselves?
• Is there a connection between solitude and independent thinking?
• What can we know about the world?

Metaphysics

• What is the relationship between identity and thought?
• What is the purpose of existence?
• What does it mean to be authentic?
• How do we define freedom?

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• If every creature sees the cat differently, is there anything that is objectively true of the cat?
• What is a cat?
• Is the way the cat sees themself more authoritative than how they are perceived by others?
• Is it possible to see the world as others do?
• Can we really know how others perceive us?
• Does how we feel about someone influence how we see them?
• Is there one right way to perceive someone or something?

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• Could we be characters in a book or videogame?
• How can we know that we are or are not book or videogame characters?
• Would it be possible to be book or videogame characters and experience consciousness?
• Could we be in a dream?
• If life were a dream, would that matter? What would be different from the way life feels to us now?

Death

• Why does life end and people die?
• If you could live your life over again, would you? If so, how many times?
• Would you choose to live forever if you could?
• What does death mean for how we live our lives?
• What do you think happens when people die?
• Could we continue to exist in some form after death?

Mind and Body

• Are we our bodies, our minds, or our brains?
• What is the difference, if any, between the brain and the mind?
• Do our bodies control our minds, or do our minds control our bodies?
• Could our minds exist without our bodies?

Appearance and Reality

• Do we experience the real world or just our perceptions of it?
• Are our perceptions an accurate depiction of reality?
• What is the role of reason in understanding reality?
• Can we have knowledge of a reality independent of our perceptions?
• Are appearances illusions or are they a way to access reality?
• What does reality mean?
• What does it mean to be real?
• If we were book characters, would that make us less “real” than we believe ourselves to be now?

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• What are some examples of places one might go to or people one might seek out to get knowledge?
• What are the benefits and disadvantages of going to these different people or sources for knowledge?
  • Self: Attempting to find answers on our own or by thinking about them
  • Family: Siblings, parents, grandparents, guardians
  • School: Teachers, classes
  • Online: Google, news sites, social media, etc.
• Given that we rely on others for a lot of our knowledge, is it possible there is something we are missing out on? Is it better to appeal to authority, or is there value in trying to answer questions yourself? What might the value be?
  • In the book, the boy thought about asking his mom for the answer because she knows a lot about the stars and the sky, but since she wasn’t there he tried to find the answer for himself. Was it a good thing that he tried to do this? Why?

Question Area Two: Are there questions we cannot answer?

• Do you think we can answer the question of how many stars there are in the sky? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What kinds of questions are we unable to answer? Does this mean that all of these questions don’t have answers?
  • For example, there may be a certain number of stars in the sky, but maybe we are not able to answer the question ourselves, although there is still an answer.
• There are different questions, some of which we may be able to find an answer to either ourselves or from others. However, other questions may have have a final answer at all. Sometimes, when we do not know something, no one else may have the answer either!
• Does a good answer to a question always mean that there is a single answer? Are there some types of questions with many valid anwers?
  • For example, what about the question “What is the best ice cream flavor?”? It seems unlikely that we will agree upon a response, but is someone else wrong if they give a different answer?

Question Area Three: Is it okay to not know something?

• Is it bad for the child that they do not know how many stars are in the sky?
• Are there positive ways of thinking about questions we don’t know the answer to?

Activity: Can we count all the grains of sand?

As we saw in the book, it may seem like an impossible task to count all of the stars in the sky. Yet, there are scientists who spend a great deal of time doing this, and they come up with answers even if it may not be through direct counting. This activity invites students to think about how exactly they might come to know something.

Materials: a medium-sized container (such as an empty jam jar) and enough sand to fill the container

Steps:

1. Fill a container with sand, and seal it with the lid.
2. Give each table group a chance to see the jar and ask them to discuss the following questions:
   • Would you be able to count the number of sand grains in the container?
   • If we told you the exact number of grains in the jar, would you accept or trust our answer? Why or why not?
   • How many grains of sand do you think are in the jar and how did you come up with this answer?
3. Do the math to get a rough estimate of how many grains of sand it in the jar (average sand grains per cup x number of cups in the jar). Bring the class back together to tell them this number and see who got closest.
4. Tell them how you got the answer and discuss the extent to which they believe this answer is correct.

Contributed by Patrick Walsh, University of Washington

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This lesson can be used either in a classroom or online.

You can use either the physical version of the book (pages 24-26) or this clip of the relevant scene from the film version if you are looking for an alternative to reading the story aloud.

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Supplemental Materials:
Teacher’s Guide: https://www.owlkidsbooks.com/portals/0/docs/stardust/stardust-teachers-guide.pdf

Contributed by Christina Zaccagnino

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Option 2: Read the story. Then read 1-2 science phenomena from the index (the teacher can choose them ahead of time, possibly in accordance with what students are learning in science, or the students can vote). Then have a discussion. This option is more narrow and may lead to a philosophical discussion around specific scientific phenomena, their relation to humans, what makes something alive, objectivity/subjectivity, and relational ways of knowing.

Option 3: Read the story and the entire index. Then have a discussion. This option is a less scaffolded version of option 2 and may be suited for an upper elementary classroom. It may lead to a broader discussion about several different scientific phenomena and their relation to humans, what makes something alive, objectivity/subjectivity, and relational ways of knowing science.

Discussion questions are roughly organized below to demonstrate potential intersections between scientific and philosophical questions. Of course, all the questions are deeply related and the questions and direction of the discussion are not limited to these categories.

Gravity

• Does it matter to gravity that I was born? Does my existence affect gravity? Why does gravity want to keep me from floating away?
• Did gravity’s pull really make me a promise? Does gravity know I am here?
• How do we know if gravity intends to keep me from floating away?

People

• Why are so many people happy that I am here? Why do the animals, wind, or Sun care that I am here?
• What is the difference between how the people welcomed me and how the wind, rain, or Sun welcomed me? How are they the same?
• How did the people know I was coming? What is the difference between how the people welcomed me and how animals welcomed me? How are they the same?

Trees making oxygen

• Did the trees make oxygen just for me, or for everyone? Is oxygen made just for people, or for other animals, too?
• Do the trees intend to make oxygen for us?
• Would the trees keep making oxygen even if people and animals didn’t breathe it in?

Sky

• Is the sky mine? Is it ours? Who does the sky belong to? What does it mean for something to be mine?
• Does the sky choose to be mine? Does it have to be alive to choose?

Rain

• Is rain always welcoming someone?
• Did the rain mean to welcome me?
• What is welcoming about rain?

Other

• Was I welcomed one by one, or did it all happen at the same time? How long was the world preparing for my birth?

Contributed by Christina Zaccagnino

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Contributed by Bridget DuRuz

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