Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysSecondhand Lions Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Walter hears extraordinary stories while deciding whom to trust in an unstable family situation. Examine the difference between factual certainty, ethical commitment, and the meaning of a told story.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 2003
- Genre
- Coming-of-age storytelling drama
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 109 minutes
- Director
- Tim McCanlies
- Screenplay
- Tim McCanlies
- Based on
- Original screenplay
- Music
- Patrick Doyle
- Featured cast
- Haley Joel Osment, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine & Kyra Sedgwick
- Story setting
- Rural Texas · mainly the 1960s, with adventure-story flashbacks
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Neglect, manipulation, and physical abuse of a child.
- Fights, threats, gunfire, a lion attack, and animal and human deaths.
- Smoking, drinking, language, and stereotyped adventure depictions.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 7–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: AFI film credits · Content advisory (spoilers)