Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key is a story told by the protagonist, Joey, in a first-person narrative style. As a result, the reader experiences the events from Joey’s point of view. Imagine that you are writing an incident from the text from the point of view of Joey’s mother, Fran Pigza. How might her recounting of an anecdote in the text differ from Joey’s, and why?

Joey experiences personal hurt on several levels, including abandonment by his mother at an early age. How might this have impacted him? For example, if Fran Pigza had been available when Joey first started to experience behavior problems in school, would there have been a different outcome?

As the story of Joey’s family becomes more detailed, his mother reveals that both she and his father drank too much alcohol. This seems to be one of the reasons that Fran was unavailable to her son for several years. She tells Joey that she worked hard to “pull it together” to return to him. What does she mean by this? What work would she have had to do?