A letter to the student
Dear student,
You are here to learn how to analyze books — but not only that. You are here to learn how to think, how to notice, how to ask the questions that matter. Reading great literature is one of the oldest and most reliable ways human beings have ever found to do all of those things at once.
Every novel, every play, every passage worth your attention is asking a question beneath its plot. Not "what happens next" — but something deeper: what does it mean to love well? What kind of person should I become? Is redemption possible? These are not academic questions. They are the questions you are already asking, whether or not you have found the words for them yet. Great writers have been turning those questions over for centuries, and the books in this curriculum are their best attempts at answers.
The method on this page — Find It, Follow It, Frame It — is not a formula for getting the right answer on an assignment. It is a way of paying attention. It will work on any text you ever read — a novel, a legal brief, a piece of Scripture, a speech, an essay. Long after this class is over, you will still be using it. That is the point.
Come back to this page often. It is not a one-time read. It is a reference for the whole year — and beyond.
— Kim, Delight & Savor
❧ · · · ❧
The Arc of Reading
Three levels of attention · one circle
Reading is a practice. Every text you ever pick up moves through the same six stations — each one preparing the next. Over time, the circle becomes faster, deeper, and more natural, until it is simply how you read.
First Impressions
Raw response before analysis. What are you still thinking about? This is the beginning of every reading.
Find It
Three movements in order — First Impressions, narration, then pointing to the text. The book becomes yours before you can think about it.
Follow It
The text suggests; you infer. Evidence and reasoning. This is the hinge — skip it and Frame It has nothing underneath.
Frame It
The big idea lifts off the page. Your Frame It question has a name — it is one of five that great literature always asks.
Writing Table
The whole arc in written form. First Impressions becomes your opening. Narration becomes context. Follow It becomes body paragraphs. Frame It becomes your thesis.
Then — the next reading
The arc is a practice. Every new text begins here again. Over time the circle becomes faster, deeper, and more natural — until it is simply how you read.
The arc in one sentence
Find It is where you notice. Follow It builds the case. Frame It is where it means something.
Where to start
If you are new to this method, you don't have to read the whole page at once. Try this order:
1
Find It — how to narrate and where to begin paying attention.
2
Follow It — the four lenses for what to look for between the lines.
3
Frame It — the Five Questions great literature is always asking.
4
Levels of Questioning — how to write a question at each level.
From the page
"Education is the science of relations."
Charlotte Mason
"The question is the beginning of attention."
Charlotte Mason
Begin with what is actually there.
Find It happens in three movements — in this order. Each one prepares the next. Skip a step and the foundation cracks.
1
First Impressions
Your honest response, before anything else
When you finish a reading, pause before you do anything else. Sit with it. Respond honestly — before your mind organizes it into something acceptable.
2
Narration
Tell it back — out loud or in writing
Tell back what you read in your own words. Don't look at the text. Don't try to be impressive. Just say what happened — what you noticed, what surprised you, what you are still carrying.
Narration is the art of knowing. What you can narrate, you know. What you cannot narrate, you have only seen.
3
Point to the text
Where exactly is it — in the book?
Now return to the text. Whatever you noticed in First Impressions, whatever you said in your narration — find where it actually lives on the page. Point to it. Quote it. The answer to a Find It question lives directly in the text.
Test
Could you point to this in the text?
A note from Kim
The order matters. First Impressions catches what is yours — your honest, unfiltered response. Narration turns what you read into something you actually possess. Only then can you point to the text and say where this lives, because by now the book is already part of you. Reverse the order and you get a student who can locate quotations but has not truly read.
Want to see what a Find It question looks like? Levels of Questioning →
From the page
"The child must have time to receive the impression."
Charlotte Mason
What the text suggests — and why you think so.
What to look for
Four kinds of looking. Let the text tell you which lens it needs.
Figurative Language
Metaphor, simile, personification, symbol, imagery
The author is comparing two unlike things, or letting one thing stand for another. Don't just name the device — ask why that comparison. What does this image carry that a literal description couldn't?
Macbeth calls life "a walking shadow, a poor player / that struts and frets his hour upon the stage." A shadow has no substance. An actor doesn't own his lines. Life isn't being compared to anything grand — it's being compared to things that only seem real. That's the argument.
Diction
Word choice — chosen over a simpler one
Every word is a choice. Ask what would have been lost if the author had used a simpler word. That gap is where the meaning lives.
Dickens calls the era "the epoch of belief, the epoch of incredulity." He could have said "age." He chose "epoch" — a word that reaches for the monumental, the historic, the biblical. That choice tells us he wants this period to feel weighty, not just busy.
Literary Elements
Tone, point of view, structure, irony, foreshadowing
The architecture of the passage. Who is telling the story, and what can they see — or not? What is the tone? Is something being said that doesn't quite match what is meant?
Brontë gives us Nelly Dean — a servant who has known the Earnshaws since childhood — as narrator. Nelly is reliable about what people did and said. She is not reliable about what it meant. That gap is the whole novel.
Patterns & Threads
What recurs across the text
An author who returns to the same image, word, or scene is telling you something. Storms, mirrors, windows, hands, light. When you see a pattern, you've found the spine of the argument.
Windows in Wuthering Heights. Catherine knocking at one, Heathcliff staring through one, the shutters latched against the storm. The window is where outside meets inside — where the wild and the civilized stand on opposite sides of the glass.
A worked example · A Tale of Two Cities
Dickens, Chapter 1 · "The Period"
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."
— Charles Dickens, 1859
— Charles Dickens, 1859
Follow It · what it suggests
The paragraph is built on anaphora — "it was the… it was the…" — and paradox. Every claim is immediately contradicted by its opposite. The rhythm is hypnotic, like a pendulum. Nothing is allowed to stand alone. This suggests Dickens wants us unsettled before we have met anyone — that historical moments are never simple, that they always contain their own contradictions.
What in the text makes you say that? Point to the words and rhythms that carry the argument.
Try this in your notebook
Choose a passage from your current reading and look through one lens — figurative language, diction, a literary element, or a pattern. Write what you notice. Anchor every claim: what in the text makes you say that?
Want to see what a Follow It question looks like? Levels of Questioning →
From the page
"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."
Robertson Davies
Where the text lifts off the page.
The Five Questions
Great literature is asking one of these beneath its plot. When you find which one, you join a conversation that has been going on for centuries.
Identity
Who am I, really?
Jane Eyre · The Great Gatsby · Wuthering Heights · Crime and Punishment
Love
What does it mean to love well?
Pride and Prejudice · Wuthering Heights · Anna Karenina · A Tale of Two Cities
Virtue
What kind of person should I become?
Macbeth · To Kill a Mockingbird · The Great Gatsby · Les Misérables
Suffering
What is the nature of suffering — and what does it demand of us?
Wuthering Heights · The Brothers Karamazov · A Tale of Two Cities
Redemption
Is redemption possible — and what does it cost?
A Tale of Two Cities · Les Misérables · Crime and Punishment · Jane Eyre
A worked example · Wuthering Heights
What happens when love becomes possessive instead of self-giving?
Can the cycle of revenge ever truly be broken?
The second generation — Cathy, Hareton, Linton — is Brontë's answer. Once you see it, the novel's architecture becomes legible.
Try this in your notebook
Write a Frame It claim about your current reading — which of the Five Questions is your book asking, and what does it suggest as an answer?
All three levels · on one passage
Read the opening of Pride and Prejudice and work through Find It, Follow It, Frame It in your notebook. There is no wrong answer — only honest or evasive ones.
The passage
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."
Find It · what's there
What does Austen actually say? Set the context in your own words.
Follow It · what it suggests
What is Austen doing with "universally acknowledged" and "rightful property"?
Frame It · what it means
Which of the Five Questions does this connect to — and what is her argument?
Want to see what a Frame It question looks like? Levels of Questioning →
Three levels of reading. Three levels of question.
How to write questions and engage with the text at each level.
Why write questions?
The student who can write a good Frame It question has understood the passage more deeply than the student who can merely answer one. Questioning is the higher skill. Writing the question forces you to name what you noticed — and to know what kind of noticing it is. Every question you write is a sign of where your attention went. Honor it.
The Question Ladder
A good question lives at one level of attention. You can tell which level by asking: where does the answer live? On the page, between the lines, or beyond the book?
The most common mistake
A Frame It question that could be asked without having read the book. "Is revenge bad?" is not a Frame It question — it's a debate prompt. The fix: name the specific moment in the text your question came from. "What does Brontë suggest… when Heathcliff…" — that specificity is what makes it a Frame It question instead of an opinion.
One Passage · Three Questions
The Dagger Soliloquy · Macbeth II.i
The same passage can carry a question at every level. Compare how each one moves — from what is on the page, to what it suggests, to what it reaches for.
Find It question
What exact phrase does Macbeth use to suggest the dagger might be a product of his own mind?
Answer: "a dagger of the mind, a false creation." You can point to it.
Follow It question
Macbeth says the dagger "marshall'st me the way that I was going." What does this suggest about how much the dagger is actually controlling his actions?
Answer: the dagger isn't leading him — it is following where he already chose to go. Inference, supported by the word "marshall'st."
Frame It question
What does Shakespeare suggest about conscience and choice — can knowing something is wrong protect us from doing it?
Answer: a discussion. A composition. The question lifts off the page into Aristotle, into your own life.
How to write your own
1
Find a specific moment. A line, an image, a sentence that caught your attention. Don't start with a theme — start with a place in the text.
2
Decide which level you want. Where do you want the reader to look — on the page, between the lines, or beyond the book?
3
Apply the test. Find It: can a reader point to the answer? Follow It: what in the text makes you say that? Frame It: rooted in the text, reaching toward something larger?
4
Read it back. Does it pass the test you aimed for? If a "Frame It" question could be asked without reading the book, return to step 1 and pick a more specific moment.
From the page
"The question is the beginning of attention."
Charlotte Mason