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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What materials did Frank use in order to build the children a swing set in the backyard?
(a) Milk crates.
(b) Car hoods.
(c) Car engines.
(d) Lengths of pipe.

2. Who was Foster Sellers and how did he play a role in the children's junkyard games?
(a) He was a local veterinarian and his van was in the family junkyard.
(b) He was a local mortician and his hearse was in the family junkyard.
(c) He was a local bank robber and his old car was in the family junkyard.
(d) He was a local doctor and his old ambulance was in the family junkyard.

3. At the hands of the tree farmers, the land was laid bare. What simile does Janisse use to describe its bare state?
(a) Bare as a vulture's pate.
(b) Bare as a sand dune.
(c) Bare as a blank sheet of paper.
(d) Bare as a possum's tail.

4. In what way was the Ray family different than everyone else in the Apostolic Church's congregation?
(a) They were the only ones who did not speak in tongues.
(b) They were the only family with fewer than eight children.
(c) They were the only white members of the congregation.
(d) They celebrated Christmas.

5. 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?
(a) A woodpecker.
(b) A heron.
(c) A robin.
(d) A pigeon.

6. What object did Frank create out of driveshafts, hollow metal rods, and fence wire?
(a) A bathtub frame.
(b) A jungle gym.
(c) An arbor for a grapevine.
(d) A cart to pull behind the family car.

7. Why did Janisse not worry when she did not have time to clean the makeshift chalkboard she and her brothers used to play school?
(a) Because she liked to start off the next lesson by punishing her brothers for some imagined misbehavior by making them clean the chalkboard.
(b) Because she knew she could come back out after dinner and play by herself.
(c) Because she knew her brothers liked to clean the board off with the hose.
(d) Because she knew a thunderstorm would come soon and wash the board clean.

8. What was the subject of Janisse's recurring daydream she had during church services?
(a) Being a bank robber.
(b) Living in the forest as a hermit.
(c) Running off to join the circus.
(d) Having a very tiny real baby of her own.

9. Though she patiently and valiantly fought to bring Frank back to mental health, what happened to finally convince Lee Ada that Frank needed to check in to a mental hospital?
(a) Frank cooked a rat and prepared to eat it for dinner.
(b) Frank locked her and the children in the back bedroom for hours, denying them food and water and murmuring to himself as he paced the house.
(c) Frank walked into town while naked.
(d) Frank lay in the yard for two days, refusing to get up.

10. In what county in Georgia was Janisse raised?
(a) Appling County.
(b) Fulton County.
(c) Mason County.
(d) Grasslands County.

11. What chore done before a thunderstorm does Janisse use in the Introduction as a metaphor for the Georgian people seeing everything coming before it happens?
(a) Rounding up the animals.
(b) Raking the leaves.
(c) Putting out the rain barrels.
(d) Bringing in the laundry.

12. What type of business did Janisse's grandfather Charlie run with his wife Clyo until he got into a fistfight that destroyed the structure?
(a) A pharmacy.
(b) A thrift store.
(c) An insurance office.
(d) A restaurant.

13. What city is NOT one of the bigger cities closest to Janisse's hometown?
(a) Savannah.
(b) Macon.
(c) Jacksonville.
(d) Atlanta.

14. Though everyone was aware of Frank's predilection toward mental illness, what did everyone, including the police, agree was another possible cause of his first major nervous breakdown?
(a) He found out Lee Ada had been unfaithful.
(b) He suddenly remembered a particularly violent episode involving his father.
(c) He had not eaten for several days and it had affected his mental state.
(d) His new friend spiked his lunch with LSD.

15. What elements of the Borderlanders' lives led them to have migratory habits?
(a) The border between Scotland and England was often in turmoil due to wars over to whom the territories belonged.
(b) Their professions as shepherds required moving to new lands where the sheep could graze.
(c) Prejudices against them forced others to continually drive them out of the areas in which they had settled.
(d) The torrential rains in the area often flooded their homes, so they would move on to higher and drier ground.

Short Answer Questions

1. What game of pretend did Janisse and her brothers play inside the old school bus?

2. When tree farming became common practice in 1940, why was the longleaf pine rarely planted by tree farmers?

3. When Janisse tells her father repeatedly that she does not like her piano lessons, what does she say she would rather be doing?

4. Why did Frank abandon after only a year the church he had founded when his children were small?

5. In the Introduction, Janisse describes where she goes to find herself among what has been and what remains. Where is that place?

(see the answer keys)

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