50 Fun Facts About The House of the Scorpion

In The House of the Scorpion, the embryo that becomes Matt is implanted in which animal to grow?

A cow carries Matt to birth in a laboratory: he is the only one of 36 embryos, made from century-old cells, to survive.

In The House of the Scorpion, what sets Matt apart from every other clone living in Opium?

His mind was never destroyed because El Patrón ignores the law that every clone's brain be blunted at birth, which is why Matt can read, play music and plan an escape.

In The House of the Scorpion, where on Matt's body is the tattoo that marks him as estate property?

The sole of his foot carries the words, which Emilia spots while maids clean the glass cuts he got climbing out of a broken window.

In The House of the Scorpion, what is the country once called Mexico known as in Matt's time?

Aztlán borrows its name from the mythical homeland of the Aztec peoples, and Matt flees there over the mountains when Opium turns on him.

In The House of the Scorpion, which cook raises Matt in a small house beside the poppy fields?

Celia looks after him there for his first six years. She comes from the same village as El Patrón, which is why he spared her and gave her a kitchen job.

In The House of the Scorpion, which bodyguard and former terrorist becomes a father figure to Matt?

Tam Lin teaches Matt to camp, cook and think for himself, then fakes the boy's execution and sets him on the path out of Opium.

In The House of the Scorpion, what is implanted in a person's head to make them an obedient eejit?

A computer chip leaves an eejit able to follow only simple orders, so a field worker nobody tells to stop will carry on until he drops dead.

Which poison does Matt's caretaker feed him in The House of the Scorpion to ruin his donor heart?

Arsenic in doses too small to hurt a healthy boy would be deadly to a frail old man, and the news throws El Patrón into the rage that kills him.

In The House of the Scorpion, which drink, saved by El Patrón for his own funeral, kills his heirs?

Wine laced with poison is poured at the wake, because El Patrón never meant to die and wanted his empire and everyone in it to go with him.

In The House of the Scorpion, what does the drug lord's Spanish title, El Patrón, mean in English?

The Boss is the translation, and it suits a man who treats every field, servant and relative in Opium as his personal property.

In The House of the Scorpion, the drug lords were granted Opium after promising America to stop what?

Illegal immigration was the problem the deal claimed to solve, and El Patrón also promised to keep his drugs out of the United States.

In The House of the Scorpion, what does young Matt use to smash the window of his locked house?

A cooking pot made of iron breaks the glass, and Matt cuts himself so badly climbing out that the children have to carry him to the Big House.

In The House of the Scorpion, a cruel housemaid keeps young Matt in a pen filled with what material?

Sawdust covers the floor as if he were livestock, and Matt fills the months burying small treasures in it and watching the bugs.

In The House of the Scorpion, which housekeeper who jailed Matt is later found working as an eejit?

Rosa is made a mindless stable hand as punishment, and Matt, who once hated her, is horrified when she looks straight through him.

In The House of the Scorpion, what is the name of María's small, much-pampered dog?

Furball goes everywhere with María, and Matt resents the dog as a reminder that the household ranks him as an animal too.

In The House of the Scorpion, who secretly kills María's dog and lets Matt take the blame?

Felicia admits it in a talk Matt and María overhear on El Patrón's surveillance screens: she killed the pet to punish Matt for being unkind to her son.

In The House of the Scorpion, which red-haired party guest turns out to be Tom's real father?

Mr. MacGregor runs a drug Farm near San Diego, and the affair explains why Tom looks so much like the mindless clone the man keeps for spare parts.

In The House of the Scorpion, which instrument does Matt teach himself in secret before taking lessons?

Piano draws Matt in after he hides in a music-room closet to hear a relative of El Patrón play, and the closet turns out to open onto secret passages.

In The House of the Scorpion, what disability makes Matt's kindly music teacher desperate for work?

He is deaf, which is why Mr. Ortega agrees to teach a clone. Matt later honours him by borrowing his surname as a false name across the border.

In The House of the Scorpion, Matt's bodyguard shares a ballad hero's name and comes from which country?

Scotland is his homeland, and the old ballad behind his name comes from its border country: the hero is rescued from the Queen of the Fairies by his true love.

In The House of the Scorpion, the bomb Matt's bodyguard meant for a prime minister blew up what instead?

A school bus took the blast and twenty children died, the guilt that later makes him stay in Opium to atone rather than flee with Matt.

In The House of the Scorpion, what are the implanted mounts that will not even drink unless ordered called?

Safe Horses are programmed to do exactly what a rider says, the first hint Matt gets of how the field workers around him are controlled.

In The House of the Scorpion, what secret mountain refuge does Matt's bodyguard show him on a picnic?

An oasis with a pool and a grapevine becomes Matt's hideout, and a trunk of supplies and books left there for him later makes his escape possible.

In The House of the Scorpion, who wrote the angry history of the drug empire that Matt reads in hiding?

Esperanza turns out to be María's long-absent mother, a campaigner against the drug lords whom her younger daughter believed was dead.

In The House of the Scorpion, which holy man's life does María read before deciding to forgive Matt?

Saint Francis did not blame animals for following their nature, so María forgives Matt on the same terms, for a death he did not even cause.

In The House of the Scorpion, which grandson of El Patrón refuses transplants and accepts death from cancer?

El Viejo is devoutly religious and chooses to die of cancer rather than use a clone, which is why Matt's caretaker calls him the family's last decent member.

In The House of the Scorpion, what lasting illness does Matt develop after months locked in a pen?

Asthma stays with Matt for good, and an attack beside a polluted river in the final chapters nearly stops him just short of rescue.

In The House of the Scorpion, what do Matt and María try to steal to flee the wedding-day chaos?

A hovercraft belonging to her father is the target, with Matt dressed as her eejit servant, but the newlyweds catch them on the landing field.

In The House of the Scorpion, which boy from the Big House grows up to marry Emilia Mendoza?

Steven marries her in a match El Patrón arranged years earlier, and the old man's collapse during the ceremony sends the bodyguards after Matt.

In The House of the Scorpion, which folklore monster does Matt describe to María, frightening her badly?

Chupacabra means goat sucker. Matt learned such tales from his caretaker, and his stories scare María so much that she stays in his locked room all night.

In The House of the Scorpion, what nickname do the orphans south of the border use for Opium?

Dreamland is the name everyone there uses, and the people trapped inside it as mindless workers are called crots or zombies.

In The House of the Scorpion, what do the Keepers farm and feed to the orphans who work for them?

Plankton is harvested at a factory near the Gulf of California, and the boys eat it at every meal while the Keepers enjoy luxurious food and quarters.

In The House of the Scorpion, what scornful nickname do the Keepers give Matt for his fine manners?

The aristocrat is what they call him, because Matt copied the speech and manners of a man more than a century behind the times.

In The House of the Scorpion, which Keeper hands out beatings at the nightly self-criticism sessions?

Jorge runs the sessions and turns the other boys on Matt, then has him and a friend bound and dumped in a pit to die.

In The House of the Scorpion, the Boneyard where Matt is left to die is filled with which animals' bones?

Whales left their bones in the dried-up basin, and Matt has to free himself and climb out across the shifting pile while bats crawl over him.

In The House of the Scorpion, which orphan drugs the Keepers and steals a shrimp harvester for the escape?

Ton-Ton had been the Keepers' most loyal boy until one of them beat him for nothing, and he knows the way because he grew up in the city they are heading for.

In The House of the Scorpion, in which city does Matt finally find María at the Convent of Santa Clara?

San Luis is in the middle of a fiesta when Matt staggers in, and María's mother has the pursuing Keepers hauled off there for drug tests.

In The House of the Scorpion, which festival is under way when Matt and Fidelito finally reach the city?

Day of the Dead revellers pack the cemetery, a holiday Matt has never seen because his caretaker kept every feast except this one.

In The House of the Scorpion, why can Matt alone override the lockdown that seals Opium off?

His DNA is identical to El Patrón's, so the security system reads him as its dead master, just as a hidden hand scanner had once opened for him.

In The House of the Scorpion, what do the orphans put to work by the Keepers call themselves?

The Lost Boys share their name with Peter Pan's gang, but most are orphans because their parents were seized while trying to cross Opium.

In The House of the Scorpion, what surname do Matt and the ruling family of Opium share?

Alacrán is a Spanish word for scorpion, which is why the creature is the family emblem and why the house of the title means a dynasty.

Nancy Farmer chose the emblem of The House of the Scorpion because El Patrón comes from which Mexican state?

Durango is so well known for the creatures that they are sold to tourists as souvenirs, and its mountains make ideal breeding grounds for them.

The House of the Scorpion won which major American literary prize in the year it was published?

National Book Award judges chose it in the young people's category, and one panelist said that year's books had erased the line between teen and adult novels.

Besides its Newbery Honor, The House of the Scorpion was named an Honor Book for which teen-fiction prize?

Printz Award judges listed it among the 2003 honor books, the year Aidan Chambers took the top prize for Postcards from No Man's Land.

Which Nancy Farmer novel, published eleven years later, continues the story of The House of the Scorpion?

The Lord of Opium follows Matt as a teenage ruler; its author had never planned a sequel and drafted it under the working title God's Ashtray.

Nancy Farmer, author of The House of the Scorpion, was born in which state on the Mexican border?

Arizona is her home state, and she laid the country of Opium over the same desert borderland that she knew from childhood.

The New York Times review of The House of the Scorpion traced the novel's roots to which classic tale?

Pinocchio was the comparison because both stories follow a hero who is treated as less than human and is desperate to be accepted as a real person.

Nancy Farmer, author of The House of the Scorpion, began writing at 40 while living in which African country?

Zimbabwe was her home after years studying tsetse fly control, and winning a story contest while there let her move back to America to write full time.

In The House of the Scorpion, El Patrón hoards his gifts in a vault to be buried like which ancient rulers?

Egyptian pharaohs took their treasure to the grave, and El Patrón goes further: his bodyguard likens him to a dragon, and his relatives end up sealed in the tomb with him.

In The House of the Scorpion, what does Matt demand from María in front of El Patrón's party guests?

A kiss is what he orders, copying El Patrón's bullying, and her humiliation at embracing a clone in public leaves Matt ashamed of himself.