City of Wishes (Legends of Lotus Island #3)

by Christina Soontornvat

In Christina Soontornvat’s City of Wishes, the third Legends of Lotus Island adventure, Plum and her fellow Guardian students travel to the magnificent city of Nakhon, where the excitement of a new place brings difficult discoveries and choices. As Plum learns more about the world beyond Lotus Island, her growing abilities and relationships challenge her to think carefully about power, responsibility, and whom to trust.

Big Idea

Being a protector requires more than special powers: it requires attention, empathy, and responsible choices. Readers can also explore how writers change a story’s speed to help us notice what matters.

Discussion Questions

1.How does visiting Nakhon challenge or change Plum’s understanding of the world beyond Lotus Island?
2.What is the difference between wanting something for yourself and wanting something that helps others? How does that question connect to the title?
3.When does Plum need to pay close attention rather than act immediately? What can we learn from her response?
4.How do Plum’s friendships influence her choices? Choose a scene that helps explain your thinking.
5.Which part of the story made you read faster, and which made you slow down? What did the author do to create that effect?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45–50 minutes📦 A copy of the book, teacher-selected passages, paper, pencils, crayons or colored pencils, and chart paper or a board

Learning Goals

Explain how Plum’s responses to a challenge reveal character traits, using a specific story detail.
Describe how the change from Lotus Island to Nakhon influences the story.
Recognize how action, description, dialogue, and reflection affect reading pace.
Create and revise a short narrative with a clear situation, thoughtful choice, and outcome.
Distinguish events in the published book from an original scene inspired by it.

Activity Steps

1.Read or revisit a short passage introducing Nakhon and a contrasting passage involving a challenge or decision. Briefly supply earlier-series context: Plum is training to become a Guardian, a protector who can take a powerful animal form.
2.Discuss what Plum notices, wants, and needs to consider. On a class chart, identify language that makes the reading feel fast and language that invites a pause.
3.Have students fold a sheet into four panels labeled Arrive, Notice, Choose, and Act. Each student plans an imagined scene in Nakhon that fits Plum’s role as a developing protector.
4.Students draw and write their scenes, using brief action sentences in one panel and sensory detail or a character’s thought in another. Younger students may dictate captions.
5.Partners read the scenes aloud and add arrows for faster movement and circles for pauses. Writers revise one sentence or panel to make a pacing choice clearer.
6.Invite students to share a revision and explain how the scene connects to responsibility or empathy. Display the work under the label 'Imagined Adventures Inspired by City of Wishes.'

Standards Connections

ELA: RL.K.3–RL.2.3 — Identify characters, settings, and major events, and describe characters’ responses to challenges; choose the grade-appropriate standard.
ELA: RL.3.3 — Describe characters and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
ELA: W.3.3–W.5.3 — Write narratives using descriptive details, dialogue, and effective event sequences; expectations vary by grade.
ELA: SL.K.1–SL.5.1 — Participate in collaborative conversations, building on others’ ideas; choose the grade-appropriate standard.
SEL: Responsible decision-making and social awareness — Consider others’ needs and explain the likely consequences of a choice.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

PART 2: PACE-WRITE-READ WORKSHOP City of Wishes offers a useful pacing study because Plum’s journey beyond Lotus Island combines the discovery of an unfamiliar city with the pressures of a fantasy adventure. Readers need time to imagine Nakhon and understand Plum’s reactions, but they also want to find out what happens next. Invite students to notice how the balance among action, conversation, description, and thought changes their experience of reading. Teach pacing as the management of attention, not simply the difference between short and long sentences. A brief sentence can stop a reader at an important realization; a longer sentence can carry readers through connected actions. Use short, teacher-selected passages from this book to test such effects aloud, and ask students to support observations with words or structural choices they can actually locate. Because this is an illustrated chapter book, study chapter endings, paragraph breaks, and illustrations rather than assuming picture-book page-turn patterns. Younger students can hear and perform contrasting passages, while older students can annotate and imitate them. In every version of the workshop, students move through the same cycle: notice a pacing choice, try it in writing, and read the result aloud to evaluate its effect.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare a passage in which Plum takes in Nakhon with one centered on an immediate challenge. Ask how much story time passes and what makes the reading feel faster or slower.
Plot	Map a sequence of events from Plum’s city adventure as cause and effect, not just 'and then.' Discuss which event creates a problem that makes readers want to continue.
Prosody	Read a selected conversation and an action passage aloud, changing phrasing, emphasis, and pauses to match their meaning. Have listeners explain which performance best supports Plum’s situation.
Word	Collect precise verbs from a passage involving Plum and compare them with general alternatives such as 'went' or 'did.' Discuss how a particular verb can clarify movement without adding a long explanation.
Concept	Use the Guardians’ role as protectors to distinguish the book’s fantasy concept from its larger questions about responsibility. Ask how showing that responsibility through a choice can be more engaging than explaining it in a paragraph.
Voice & Worldview	Notice how the narration presents the city through the concerns of a young person learning to protect others. Ask what Plum finds important and how those priorities shape the reader’s impression of Nakhon.
Point of View	Track whose thoughts and observations readers can access in a selected scene. Rewrite two sentences from another character’s perspective and discuss what readers would learn sooner—or have to wait to discover.
Setting & Place	Compare details associated with Lotus Island and Nakhon. Discuss how an unfamiliar environment can slow Plum down to observe or force her to respond quickly.
Original Characters	Identify qualities that make Plum recognizable beyond her Guardian abilities, such as her concerns, relationships, and responses to uncertainty. Students can invent a city resident whose goal creates a believable choice for her.
Dialogue	Choose a conversation between Plum and another character and identify what changes because of it. Read it without its surrounding narration, then restore that narration to hear how actions and pauses affect the exchange.
Details	Select one small detail Plum notices in Nakhon and explain what it contributes to setting, mood, or understanding. Ask whether removing it would make the passage merely shorter or genuinely more effective.
Descriptions	Examine a descriptive passage connected to the city and identify the details that help readers imagine the place. Students then describe an imagined corner of Nakhon in two sentences without interrupting their scene for a full catalog.
Firsts	Find a moment when Plum encounters something unfamiliar during the city visit. Discuss how a first encounter gives the author a reason to pause for observation and reaction.
Immediacy & Engagement	Locate a moment when Plum has an immediate goal or concern. Ask students how quickly they can identify what she wants and what might stand in her way.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Contrast an event presented moment by moment with a passage that covers events more briefly. Discuss why a significant choice deserves a scene while a transition may need only a summary.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	During a difficult moment in Nakhon, pause and list what Plum knows, what readers know, and what remains uncertain. Explain how unanswered questions can sustain suspense without constant action.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Inspect selected passages and chapter endings for memories, hints of future trouble, or unresolved situations, naming only devices actually present. Ask how a reminder of Plum’s earlier training or an unanswered question changes readers’ expectations.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Study a chapter ending and the opening that follows it. Ask what readers must wait to learn, distinguishing deliberate chapter structure from page breaks that may vary by edition.
Pace & Creativity	Invite students to retell the same imagined moment in Nakhon twice: once as a rapid response and once as a careful observation. Compare how the pacing changes the mood without changing the basic event.
Play	Use a 'Guardian director' game in which students signal move, notice, or think during an oral retelling of a selected scene. Discuss which signals fit Plum’s circumstances and which would interrupt the story.
Performance	Have a narrator and character readers perform a short passage involving Plum and her companions. Let the group rehearse meaningful pauses rather than simply reading every exciting passage loudly.
Personality	Compare how Plum and a companion respond to the same situation in the city. Discuss how a character’s habits or temperament can create hesitation, quick action, or disagreement.
Humor	If students identify a light or amusing exchange, examine how it briefly changes the mood of the adventure. Do not assume every scene is comic; ask what would happen if humor interrupted a serious choice.
Pause	Find a moment when Plum observes, listens, or reflects rather than acting immediately. Discuss how that pause can reveal care or increase anticipation instead of making the story feel inactive.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for a comparison, sound pattern, or vivid image in the book’s descriptions, identifying only what the passage supports. Students can try one original comparison for the city and decide whether it sharpens or delays the moment.
Repetition	Track a recurring concern or idea connected to Plum’s responsibilities as a Guardian. Ask whether each return develops the idea or simply reminds readers of it.
Rhythm	Read several consecutive sentences from a selected passage and listen for changes in length and structure. Discuss how those changes support movement, hesitation, or reflection in Plum’s experience.
Punctuation	Examine how punctuation organizes a conversation or an urgent moment in the book. Students can repunctuate an original sentence about Plum and read both versions aloud to test the change.
Questions	Keep a chart of questions students have about Nakhon, Plum’s discoveries, and the choices ahead. Mark when the story answers a question, complicates it, or deliberately leaves it open.
Compare-Contrast	Compare Plum’s expectations of the city with what she experiences there, citing specific details. Discuss how the gap between expectation and reality keeps readers attentive.
Objects	Choose an object actually mentioned or pictured in a selected city scene and trace what it contributes. Ask whether it helps establish place, directs attention, or matters to the action rather than assuming it is a symbol.
Threes	Check a selected passage for a genuine three-part pattern in actions, details, or sentence structure; do not impose one if none appears. As an imitation exercise, students can give Plum two quick observations followed by a third that makes her stop.
Lists	Notice whether a city description groups several details together and how that grouping affects the impression of abundance or movement. Students can compare a three-item sensory list with one carefully developed detail.
White Space & Negative Space	Examine paragraph breaks and the space around chapter openings or illustrations in your edition. Discuss how visual separation offers a pause or gives a moment emphasis without treating every empty area as a deliberate dramatic signal.
Art & Graphics	Compare an illustration with its nearby text to identify what each contributes to understanding characters or place. Ask how stopping to inspect the image changes the reader’s pace.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom 'Guardian pacing mission' in which students earn a check for finding action, observation, and reflection in a selected passage. Clarify that this is a teaching game, not an interactive feature of the novel.
Placement	Study where an important discovery appears within a paragraph or chapter about Plum’s city experience. Discuss how moving it to the beginning or end would change emphasis and anticipation.
Form	Consider how an illustrated fantasy chapter book gives Plum’s adventure room for connected scenes and developing relationships. Compare that reading experience with compressing one event into a four-panel storyboard.
Dummy	Use 'dummy' to mean a rough page model: students fold paper into four panels for an original scene inspired by the book. They test where a reveal or pause belongs; this models their own adaptation rather than reconstructing the published book’s production process.
Passion	Ask students which aspect of Plum’s journey—friendship, discovery, protection, or responsible use of power—they care about most. Have them use that interest to choose the moment their own scene will slow down and emphasize.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: 'One City Moment, Two Speeds.' Minutes 0–3: Revisit a short passage from Plum’s visit to Nakhon and identify one place that invites observation and one that encourages forward movement. Minutes 3–5: Offer this explicitly invented, book-inspired scenario: 'In Nakhon, Plum notices a small creature trapped beside a busy walkway. She must decide how to help without putting others in danger.' Minutes 5–10: Students write a four-to-six-sentence scene, slowing the discovery with one sensory detail and one thought, then quickening Plum’s response with precise action verbs. Minutes 10–14: Students revise the pacing by cutting an unnecessary explanation or adding a purposeful pause; K–2 students may draw three panels and dictate captions instead. Minutes 14–18: Partners read aloud, marking a pause with a slash and a quicker section with an arrow, then explain whether the pacing makes Plum’s concern and choice clear. Minutes 18–20: Each student shares one revision and completes the reflection, 'I slowed down when ___ because ___.' Label all work as imagined scenes, not events from the published story.

Classroom Activities

Plum’s Stop-and-Go Story Path

Students create a folded, illustrated story path inspired by Plum’s visit to Nakhon. They write an original, clearly labeled imagined scene in which Plum notices someone or something needing help, pauses to consider a responsible choice, and then acts. Colored pacing symbols show where readers should speed up or slow down. Teaching note: this title is an illustrated fantasy chapter book, not a picture book; use selected read-aloud passages and drawing or dictation for K–2, and supported or independent reading and writing for grades 3–5.

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