Use this guide to explore the story of two lonely children who form a strong friendship and create an imaginary magical forest kingdom to escape their troubles together. This instructional guide for literature supports Common Core Learning Standards and is filled with challenging cross-curricular activities and lessons that work in conjunction with the text to teach students how to better analyze and comprehend literature. This guide is the perfect tool to teach students how to analyze story elements in multiple ways, practice close reading, improve text-based vocabulary, and determine meaning through text-dependent questions. This is the perfect way to support this well-known story while adding rigor to your students' explorations of rich, complex literature.