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Restart · Garden Heights
Part 4
for Restart · Part 4 · Chapters 13–16
8 Parts40 min
What Happens in Part 4
Excused from service, Chase keeps visiting Mr. Solway anyway — until the old soldier's Medal of Honor turns up missing.
Showing Up AnywayChase's hours at Portland Street began as a court sentence — shared with Aaron and Bear for the cherry bomb at Joel Weber's recital — but his injury has excused him, and he keeps showing up anyway. The reason is Mr. Solway, who snarls at the staff, boycotts the activity room, and shuts his door on every visitor, yet tolerates Chase and only Chase.
The Forgotten WarPiece by piece the soldier's story comes out: Mr. Solway fought in the Korean War — the war Americans call forgotten — and came home with the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration his country can give, though he waves the subject away and insists the real heroes never made it back.
The Empty CaseShoshanna's video club is hunting a story for the National Video Journalism Contest, and Chase offers a matchless one: a living Medal of Honor recipient who will talk to nobody but him. So Shoshanna, after years of hating everything Chase stands for, must build the entry beside him. On camera the veteran opens up about the frozen war — but when Shoshanna hunts for the famous medal, she finds its presentation case in his closet empty. A quiet mystery begins.
Almost a GrandsonAround the pair, life churns: Aaron and Bear slouch through their own hours in the building, rude to staff and residents alike; Brendan tries to recruit Chase for a stunt video meant to dazzle Kimberly, and gets turned down. Shoshanna, hiding it all from her homesick brother Joel, begins visiting Mr. Solway even when there is nothing to film — because the monster she remembers keeps behaving like a kind, patient boy, almost a grandson to a childless old man.
What We Will Learn
Section
What you will practice
Vocabulary
Medals, elders, and earned trust: veteran, cantankerous, valor, citation, footage…
Literary Elements
Rotating first-person narrators, foil characters in varsity jackets, and dramatic irony that lets the reader outrun Shoshanna’s certainty
Cross-Curricular
The Korean War and the Medal of Honor — the 1950–53 conflict Americans call forgotten, and the rare award a hero keeps out of sight
Chapter Summary
Ch.
What happens
Chapter 13
The Perfect Subject — Shoshanna’s video club sets its sights on the National Video Journalism Contest, and Chase proposes the ideal profile: Mr. Solway, the Medal of Honor veteran who will talk to nobody but him. Teaming with Chase is the last thing Shoshanna wants — and she hides every bit of it from her miserable, homesick brother Joel.
Chapter 14
The Empty Case — With Chase in the room, Mr. Solway opens up on camera about the frozen war in Korea. Then Shoshanna finds the case for his Medal of Honor in the closet — and it is empty. The medal is missing, and neither teenager can explain it.
Chapter 15
Leaf Man — Brendan schemes to impress Kimberly with a daredevil video stunt, but she will only help if Chase is part of it — and Chase is too busy with Shoshanna and Mr. Solway to play internet stuntman.
Chapter 16
Almost a Grandson — Joel calls home, wretched at boarding school, and Shoshanna keeps hiding the project from him. Meanwhile she starts visiting Mr. Solway with Chase even when the camera is off, and admits to herself that the boy she hates acts like a different person — almost a grandson to the childless veteran.
Part 1
Vocabulary
Study 10 key words from Chapters 13–16, then answer each question.
⚔Knowledge Bank · The War America Misplaced
History · The Forgotten WarBetween 1950 and 1953, Americans fought a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula — and then, strangely, stopped talking about it. It began before dawn on June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops poured across the 38th parallel — the line of latitude then dividing Korea — to conquer the South. The United States led a United Nations force into the fight, and for three years the battle line surged up and down the peninsula before freezing close to where it had started. More than 36,000 Americans died there, yet the war ended with an armistice — an agreement to stop shooting, not a peace treaty — so there was no victory to celebrate and no parade to march in. Squeezed between World War II and Vietnam, Korea slipped out of the national memory, and its veterans came home to a country already looking away. Mr. Solway’s gruffness has a real history behind it: his generation learned that a nation could spend its soldiers’ courage and then leave it forgotten.
veterann.Ch.13
A person who has served in the armed forces
“Mr. Solway, a Korean War veteran, keeps his door closed to nearly everyone.”
cantankerousadj.Ch.13
Bad-tempered and hard to please
“The staff warn every newcomer that the old man is famously cantankerous.”
toleratev.Ch.13
To put up with someone or something without complaint
“For reasons nobody can name, Mr. Solway will tolerate Chase and no one else.”
valorn.Ch.14
Great courage in the face of danger
“The Medal of Honor is reserved for valor far beyond the call of duty.”
decoratedadj.Ch.14
Honored with medals for military service
“A decorated hero, Mr. Solway shrugs as if the honor belongs to somebody else.”
citationn.Ch.14
An official statement describing why an award was given
“The citation tells what happened on a frozen hillside in Korea.”
footagen.Ch.15
Video material that has been recorded
“The club needs unforgettable footage to have any chance at the contest.”
reluctantadj.Ch.13
Unwilling and slow to agree
“Shoshanna is reluctant to spend a single afternoon on Chase’s side of a project.”
menialadj.Ch.16
Describing humble work that takes little skill
“Aaron grumbles through every menial chore on the residence’s list.”
resentmentn.Ch.16
Bitter anger about how you have been treated
“Bear’s resentment grows with every hour of scrubbing and sweeping.”
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, Korean War veterans came home to a country looking away partly because the war ended with ___.Ch.13
2‘Cantankerous’ describes someone cheerful and easy to please.Ch.13
3To ‘tolerate’ someone is to ___.Ch.13
4‘Valor’ means ___.Ch.14
5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.14
Word choices:citationdecoratedveteranvalor- some words will not be used
The explains what Mr. Solway did in Korea.
A highly soldier may still keep his medals hidden away.
6‘Footage’ means ___.Ch.15
7‘Reluctant’ means unwilling and slow to agree.Ch.13
8‘Menial’ work is work that ___.Ch.16
9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.16
Word choices:resentmentfootagemenialtolerate- some words will not be used
The club reviewed the day’s after school.
Bear made no secret of his at the sentence.
10‘Resentment’ is bitter anger about how you have been treated.Ch.16
Part 2
Comprehension
Show you understood what happens in Chapters 13–16.
👴Knowledge Bank · A Hallway Full of Whole Lives
Sociology · Elder CareAn assisted-living residence sits halfway between an apartment and a hospital: residents keep their own rooms and routines while staff handle meals, medicine, and safety. The United States now has tens of thousands of such facilities, and they are filling fast as the generation born before World War II reaches its nineties. What the buildings cannot supply is company. Public-health researchers have found that chronic loneliness damages an aging body roughly as much as heavy smoking, raising the risk of heart disease, dementia — the gradual loss of memory and thinking — and early death. Many residents outlive their friends, their siblings, and sometimes their own children, so a week can pass without a single real conversation. That is the quiet fact underneath Part 4. Mr. Solway does not need his floor swept again or his television adjusted; Gordon Korman (author) shows us a man rich in memories and starved of the one medicine the residence cannot stock — a genuine listener.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, public-health researchers compare the damage of chronic loneliness to ___.Ch.13
2What stunt earned Chase, Aaron, and Bear their sentence?Ch.13
3Mr. Solway chats warmly with every volunteer who knocks on his door.Ch.13
4What honor did Mr. Solway earn in the Korean War?Ch.13
5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 13–16
Mr. Solway shares his war stories on camera for the project.
Shoshanna discovers that the Medal of Honor case is empty.
Chase proposes Mr. Solway as the club’s profile subject.
The video club decides to enter the National Video Journalism Contest.
Shoshanna starts visiting Mr. Solway even when the camera is off.
6Kimberly agrees to help with Brendan’s stunt video only if Chase is involved.Ch.15
7What does the video club hope to do with the Solway story?Ch.13
8Who ends up working on the Solway video alongside Chase?Ch.13
9Watching Chase with Mr. Solway leaves Shoshanna’s opinion of him completely unchanged.Ch.16
10What does Shoshanna find in Mr. Solway’s closet?Ch.14
Part 3
Literary Elements
Understanding HOW and WHY Gordon Korman tells the story across Chapters 13–16.
🎬Knowledge Bank · One Boy, Many Cameras
Authorial Craft · Perspective and BiasRestart never lets one voice own the story. Gordon Korman (author) hands each chapter to a different first-person narrator and stamps the teller’s name at its head like a byline. The design does two jobs at once. First, it turns the reader into an investigator: no single narrator knows the whole truth about Chase Ambrose, so the real portrait exists only in the reader’s head, assembled from testimony that keeps disagreeing with itself. Second, it manufactures irony. When Shoshanna calls Chase dangerous in one chapter and Mr. Solway trusts him in the next, the reader holds both facts while each character holds only one. Watch how the same event changes size depending on who reports it — an afternoon at Portland Street is a sentence in one telling and almost a privilege in another. The technique fits the novel’s central question exactly: if identity lives in other people’s eyes, then a boy is whoever the current narrator says he is — until the chapters, stacked together, reveal the truth.
Rotating Narrators
Each chapter is handed to a different first-person teller — Chase, Shoshanna, Bear, and the rest — so the reader assembles a truth no single character owns.
Foil
A character whose contrast makes another character’s qualities stand out. Aaron and Bear, loafing beside a boy who works, are foils for the Chase who used to lead them.
Dramatic Irony
The reader knows things the characters do not — watching Shoshanna distrust a Chase the reader has come to know creates a gap the story keeps widening.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, the rotating narration turns the reader into ___.Ch.13
2A character whose contrast highlights another character’s qualities is ___.Ch.16
3Dramatic irony happens when readers know something the characters do not.Ch.15
4Placed beside Chase at Portland Street, Aaron and Bear mainly function as ___.Ch.16
5In Part 4, the reader learns about Chase only through Chase’s own chapters.Ch.14
6Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.16
Word choices:foilnarratorsrhymestanza- some words will not be used
Bear serves as a to the boy Chase is becoming.
The book hands its chapters to several different .
7The name printed at the top of each chapter tells the reader ___.Ch.13
8Dramatic irony disappears whenever a story uses more than one narrator.Ch.15
9Which situation in Part 4 is the clearest example of dramatic irony?Ch.13
10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.15
Word choices:ironycharacterizationglossaryfootnote- some words will not be used
Readers knowing what Shoshanna cannot yet accept creates dramatic .
Revealing Mr. Solway through his gruff talk is .
Part 4
Think Deeper
Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.
🏅Knowledge Bank · The Medal in the Drawer
Military History · Valor AwardsThe Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest military decoration, presented by the President in the name of Congress. Its standard is deliberately extreme: conspicuous gallantry — courage so obvious it cannot be missed — above and beyond the call of duty, at real risk of the recipient’s life, and usually confirmed by sworn witnesses. Rarity is the point. Roughly forty million Americans have served in uniform since the Civil War, and fewer than 3,600 medals have ever been awarded; the Korean War produced about 150, and a great many of those went to soldiers who did not live to wear them. That arithmetic explains a pattern interviewers meet again and again: recipients deflect. Many insist the medal really belongs to friends who never came home, and some, like the fictional Mr. Solway, put it away out of sight and change the subject. Gordon Korman (author) is drawing on something true — for the soldiers who wear it, the nation’s brightest honor is braided together with its heaviest grief.
Picture a hallway that smells of coffee and floor wax, in a building where every door stands open for company — every door but one. Behind that one sits an old man who has chased off every volunteer, charmed no nurse, and joined no bingo game, a man so famously prickly that the staff apologize for him in advance. Now picture who he finally lets in: the most feared eighth grader in town — a boy whose injury excuses him from his court-ordered hours, and who keeps showing up anyway. Part 4 belongs to that unlikely pair. Chase Ambrose stays to listen, and what comes out of Mr. Solway — a frozen war on the far side of the world, a medal most soldiers never even see — hands the video club the subject of a lifetime. But two other boys are grinding out the same sentence in the same building, a girl who hates Chase is beginning to distrust her own certainty, and in the case where the nation’s highest military honor ought to be lying, there is nothing at all.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Claim: “Part 4 argues that trust is earned by small actions, not granted by reputations.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence
2Evidence of the old Chase, or Evidence of a new Chase? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two
◄ Evidence of the old ChaseEvidence of a new Chase ►
3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect
A cherry bomb wrecks Joel’s piano recital→
Mr. Solway refuses every interviewer→
Aaron and Bear loaf through their chores→
Shoshanna searches the closet for the medal→
🧠Knowledge Bank question
4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument
The Knowledge Bank explains that Medal of Honor recipients often deflect the award because , which suggests that Mr. Solway’s hidden medal signals .
Part 5
Standardized Test
The Forgotten War’s Medal · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice
Read the passage — the highlighted words are tested — then answer. Tap an answer, then tap it again to confirm.
SATCentral Ideas — the passage's main point
SATInference — a conclusion the passage implies
SATAuthor’s Purpose — what the author wants to achieve
SATWords in Context — a word's meaning in this passage
TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated in the passage
TOEFLInsert Text — where a sentence best fits
TOEFLVocabulary — a tested word's meaning here
The Forgotten War’s Medal
Before dawn on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops stormed across the 38th parallel — the line then dividing Korea — to conquer the South. Within weeks the United States led a United Nations force into the war. For three years the battle line surged up and down the peninsula before freezing into a stalemate near where everything had begun. The fighting stopped on July 27, 1953, not with a surrender but with an armistice, and since no peace treaty ever followed, the two Koreas remain technically at war today.
Nearly 37,000 Americans died there, yet the conflict soon earned a strange nickname: the Forgotten War. It fell between two giants — World War II, which ended in parades, and Vietnam, which ended in protest — and for all its soldiers’ valor, it offered no clean victory to celebrate. Its veterans came home one by one to a country busy with other things, and many rarely spoke of it again. Their national memorial in Washington did not open until 1995, forty-odd years after the guns fell silent.
One measure of what those men did survives in America’s rarest decoration. The Medal of Honor is presented by the President in the name of Congress, and it demands gallantry beyond the call of duty at the risk of the recipient’s life. Roughly forty million Americans have served in uniform, yet fewer than 3,600 of these medals have ever been awarded; the Korean War produced about 150, many of them posthumously. Recipients are famous for deflecting the honor, insisting that the real heroes are the friends who never came home. Perhaps that is why some aging veterans keep the medal, and the citation that records the deed behind it, in a dresser drawer instead of a display case.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas
2According to the passage, the Korean War began when ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
3According to the passage, when did the veterans’ national memorial in Washington open?TOEFL · Factual Information
4The passage suggests Korean War veterans stayed quiet about the war partly because ___.SAT · Inference
5Insert Text (TOEFL). Look at the four squares [1]–[4] in the excerpt below. They show where this sentence could be added: “President Harry Truman, who draped it around many necks, reportedly told recipients he would rather wear that medal than be president.”
Roughly forty million Americans have served in uniform, yet fewer than 3,600 of these medals have ever been awarded; the Korean War produced about 150, many of them posthumously. [1] The Medal of Honor is presented by the President in the name of Congress, and it demands gallantry beyond the call of duty at the risk of the recipient’s life. [2] Recipients are famous for deflecting the honor, insisting that the real heroes are the friends who never came home. [3] One measure of what those men did survives in America’s rarest decoration. [4]
Where would the sentence fit best?TOEFL · Insert Text
6Why does the author include the numbers forty million and 3,600?SAT · Author’s Purpose
7What can be inferred about Medal of Honor recipients?SAT · Inference
8In the passage, valor most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
9In the passage, armistice most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
10In the passage, citation most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
Part 6 · Optional
Creative Writing
A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.
About This Section
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 4 “The Person Only You Could Reach”
Mr. Solway slams his door on everyone at Portland Street — everyone except Chase. Write about a time you connected with someone other people had given up on — an elder, a classmate, a neighbor — or a time when someone was patient enough to reach you when you had shut everyone else out. Describe what the wall was, what finally got through it, and what each of you gained. 6–10 sentences. End with what the experience taught you about how trust is earned.
You can start with: “Everyone told me it was a waste of time to keep knocking on that door...”
0 / 40 words minimum
🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Gordon Korman. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Gordon Korman’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.
