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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why is Belgrade, Serbia an unsafe place for Mahmoud and his family?
(a) Many people in Serbia are Islamophobic.
(b) The Serbian police are raiding hotels looking for illegal refugees.
(c) The Serbian police shoot first and ask questions later.
(d) Many Serbians are employed as informers for the government.

2. Why is Lito alarmed when a passenger shoots at the sharks in the water with his pistol?
(a) Lito thinks that Luis looks like he is having a mental breakdown.
(b) Lito is worried that the sharks' blood will bring a greater number of sharks.
(c) Lito is worried that in his anger, Luis will hit a passenger by mistake.
(d) Lito does not want the group to waste their bullets.

3. When Captain Schroeder assures the passengers of Josef's ship that they will not return to Germany, what other plan does he say he will be enacting?
(a) The ship will cruise the American coast, appealing to President Roosevelt.
(b) The ship will attempt to let the passengers off on the island of Lesbos.
(c) The ship will cruise the Canadian coast, appealing to the Prime Minister.
(d) The ship will next try to seek refuge in the Dominican Republic.

4. Who appears next to Josef's ship and manages to convince authorities to release his two daughters from the ship?
(a) The girls' brother.
(b) The girls' father.
(c) The girls' mother.
(d) The girls' aunt.

5. When Isabel thinks of her family's journey as a song, she thinks that what events would constitute the first verse?
(a) The riots and the bartering for gasoline.
(b) The tanker and the storm.
(c) The trip from Cuba to the Dominican Republic.
(d) The trip from the Bahamas to Florida.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many refugees are expected to board the inflatable rubber dinghy used by the smugglers hired by Mahmoud's father?

2. When Isabel and her family learn where they have actually landed in their boat, what does an official tell them will happen if they come all the way ashore?

3. What is eventually the only part of Isabel's family's boat that remains unsplintered?

4. Where does Josef's mother take Ruthie so that she can enact her plan to calm her husband?

5. When Mahmoud cries with "exhaustion and misery" (192) while floating in the sea and wants "to do it all over again," what is NOT something he includes on the list of things he would do differently?

Short Essay Questions

1. Though the narrator states that a few of the refugees Mahmoud sees when boarding the dinghy have backpacks or plastic bags, how are most of the refugees carrying their belongings?

2. How does Josef's mother's plan for getting a sleeping potion for her husband Aaron go awry?

3. Whenever Mahmoud or his father wonder where Mahmoud's mother is, where do they inevitably find her and what is she doing?

4. What change occurs in Josef's mother's personality once the MS St. Louis leaves Cuba?

5. What reason is given for why Isabel has never been to church?

6. What occurs when Isabel and her family realize they have landed on the Bahamas?

7. What plans for his life in Florida does Señor Castillo reveal to the remaining passengers in the boat after Ivan's death?

8. What happens to Mahmoud's family on the way from Belgrade to the Hungarian border?

9. What is the reason given for the firemen on the ship engaging in bad behavior while the ship is docked in Cuba and what are they said to be doing?

10. What is Josef's mother's plan for procuring a sleeping potion to help calm her husband Aaron down?

(see the answer keys)

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