A Hero's Guide to Summer Vacation: List 1

by Pablo Cartaya
Gonzalo Alberto Sánchez García finds himself on a cross-country roadtrip with his estranged grandfather, an internationally acclaimed author of a children's fantasy series. Over the course of the 10-day trip, Gonzolo learns the truth behind his grandfather's famous tales and gains a better understanding of himself and his family.

This list covers vocabulary from "Epigraph"—"The Old Recliner."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
15 words 41 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. interplay
    the way in which two things mutually affect one another
    “What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other.”
  2. expectation
    anticipating with confidence of fulfillment
    He wasn’t a big reader of books, and after spending all of elementary school disappointing people because he wasn’t actually named after his famous grandfather’s fantasy book series, he was ready to shed the expectations of his purported namesake.
  3. bleak
    offering little or no hope
    Things had become bleak for Gonzalo. But every hero needs to see the bottom of the ocean if they ever want to learn how to swim up to catch a new breath.
  4. narrator
    someone who tells a story
    Your humble narrator is merely here as a guide. I have no control over the proceedings of this story, and all I’ll offer is an occasional observation.
  5. carrion
    the dead and rotting body of an animal; unfit for human food
    With my iPad in hand, I take a photo of the vultures having their fill of carrion covered by the misty fog below.
  6. minion
    a servile or fawning dependent
    I take out my pen and transform the photograph into an original drawing: A giant sea creature rising from the fog. A messenger bird trying to get home....The sea creature’s scavenging minions pouncing on the fallen messenger.
  7. venture
    proceed somewhere despite the risk of possible dangers
    The garbage can on the way up to my grandfather’s overflows from years of being uncollected. It’s just out of sight, and my grandfather never seems to venture very far from his house, so maybe that’s why the trash has never been picked up.
  8. hypothesize
    believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds
    When I tried to observe what happened to the murres, to do what my dad did and document and hypothesize on the cause and effect of their deaths, the only thing that came out was images of monsters devouring the birds and littering the landscape with their carcasses.
  9. dystopian
    of an imaginary place where life is extremely bad
    “Where in the world is that?” she questioned with wide-eyed horror. “It looks like a place in a dystopian novel.”
  10. inclination
    a characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition
    Gonzalo and Alberto both have artistic inclinations, but they don’t know much about each other—not really, anyway.
  11. palatial
    relating to or being a large and stately residence
    Let’s see if Gonzalo starts asking questions or if he’s going to prefer staying quiet while lodging at Abuelo Alberto’s palatial property on the Pacific.
  12. fandom
    the admirers of a certain celebrity, team, show, etc.
    By the end of elementary, my teachers and classmates, even the principal, stopped talking to me about my grandfather. They separated their fandom from the kid who happened to be related to the author.
  13. fateful
    having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences
    He eyes the timepiece carefully. The electric-green colon blinks, and blinks, and blinks, almost matching his heartbeat. It’s a reminder of what his dad told him when he set sail that fateful evening.
  14. tragedy
    an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
    The story of the beings that roamed Atlantis during the ancient times, especially that of the great queen Anjana, is one of tragedy.
  15. derogatory
    expressive of low opinion
    “What does that mean?”
    “It’s a derogatory term to say ‘someone who has just gotten to the country.’ ”
Created on Fri Mar 27 16:53:17 EDT 2026 (updated Wed Jun 03 18:55:06 EDT 2026)

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