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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why did Janisse not worry when she did not have time to clean the makeshift chalkboard she and her brothers used to play school?

2. Janisse describes her area of southern Georgia as lying below the fall line. What does she say that fall line serves to separate from one another?

3. How often did the car crusher make a visit to the family junkyard?

4. What type of bird was Clyde, the bird that Frank nursed back to health after finding it on the side of the highway with a broken leg and wing?

5. What does Janisse say the source of southern Georgia's majesty and sublimity used to come from before that source was destroyed?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why do people call certain parts of the wood of the longleaf pine "fat-lightered"?

2. After explaining that "Ninety-eight percent of the presettlement longleaf pine barrents in the southeastern coastal plains were lost by 1986" (16), Janisse writes that she did not know about this loss as a child. However, she states, "But it is a loss that as an adult shadows every step I take" (16). What does she mean?

3. Whose idea was it to spread old shoes around underneath the grapevine and what was the intended purpose of that act?

4. What descriptions of her homeland does Janisse give in order to support her claim that her "homeland is about as ugly as a place gets" (13)?

5. What are some ways in which Janisse shows her parents that she is a tomboy who likes to be outside in nature more than she enjoys any other activities?

6. What is the effect on the reader when in the chapter entitled Junkyard, Janisse writes, "I was six the year mental illness stole my father," (77) and how does the author create that effect?

7. How does the Thingfinders Club play into the memoir's message regarding ecology?

8. Why did Janisse look forward so much to the days when Frank shopped at Winn-Dixie?

9. Why were the conditions so favorable for Frank's junkyard business to make money?

10. When Janisse wrote that her father Frank was a "mechanic in the word's truest sense," what did she mean?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the chapter entitled How the Heart Opens, Janisse relates how, upon asking Frank if they could pick some flowers, Frank told her and her siblings, "You know, it's a shame to pick something beautiful from dilapidated surroundings. There needs to be some beauty everywhere." What does this comment demonstrate about Frank's personality, about his role within the family, and about how Frank influenced his daughter's worldview as she grew up?

Essay Topic 2

Explain the significance of Janisse Ray's abject rejection of her great-grandfather Pun's advice to not "take more on your heart than you can shake off on your heels." How does her rejection of this maxim relate to the larger themes within the memoir?

Essay Topic 3

What is the significance of scene in which Janisse's grandfather Charlie leads Janisse to his secret copse of huckleberries? How does the author use this event as a metaphor for a particular piece of her worldview and what message does she send to the reader through her relaying of this event?

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