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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What expensive item did Frank buy for the household in order to foster his childrens' interest in knowledge and learning?
(a) A set of encyclopedias.
(b) A gold-encased compass.
(c) A marble globe.
(d) A microscope kit.

2. What job did Janisse's great-grandfather Pun have that she sees as having wreaked havoc on the longleaf pine forests?
(a) Lumberjack.
(b) Cattle herder.
(c) Surveyor.
(d) Farmer.

3. In what year was Janisse born?
(a) 1962.
(b) 1960.
(c) 1965.
(d) 1978.

4. When Janisse relates that the children did not believe their birth stories, what does she say would have been a more believable story for their parents to have told about her own birth?
(a) That they had found her in the truck of a '52 Ford.
(b) That she'd been delivered in the parking lot of the hospital.
(c) That they'd found her in a basket on their doorstep.
(d) That she'd been brought by a stork.

5. What did Charlie hope to accomplish by placing old shoes beneath plants?
(a) He believed that shoes were good luck for living things.
(b) He said it would inspire the plants to outrun any diseases that threatened their health.
(c) He hoped that the slowly decomposing leather would leech nitrogen to fertilize the plants.
(d) He thought the leather would insulate the plants from contact with the frozen ground.

6. 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) The torrential rains in the area often flooded their homes, so they would move on to higher and drier ground.
(c) Their professions as shepherds required moving to new lands where the sheep could graze.
(d) Prejudices against them forced others to continually drive them out of the areas in which they had settled.

7. What game of pretend did Janisse and her brothers play inside the old school bus?
(a) Baptism.
(b) Chain gang.
(c) Zoo.
(d) Runaway school bus.

8. How often does Janisse say thunderstorms happened in the summer in their area of Georgia?
(a) Almost every summer afternoon.
(b) About once a month.
(c) Rarely.
(d) At least three times a week.

9. Because Janisse was one of her grandfather Charlie's favorite grandchildren, what two skills did he teach her?
(a) How to play horseshoes and how to wrestle.
(b) How to fight and how to fish.
(c) How to play the piano and how to tie a good knot.
(d) How to find huckleberry patches and how to make a raft.

10. Janisse uses a quote from which novel to begin Chapter 3, Shame?
(a) A Separate Peace.
(b) Ecotopia.
(c) Absalom, Absalom.
(d) A Brave New World.

11. Of the 156 million acres that used to constitute the longleaf pine's southeastern range, how many of those acres were once covered by longleaf pines?
(a) 65 million.
(b) 85 million.
(c) 105 million.
(d) 35 million.

12. When Charlie somehow got out of the mental institution to which Clyo had him committed, how did she persuade him to leave the family home again?
(a) By giving him all the money she had.
(b) By telling him that the children would be better off without him.
(c) By calling the police and threatening to have him recommitted.
(d) By telling him that he could live in the old van down by the river.

13. Which of the following is an element of the dialect known as "Cracker speech"?
(a) Ending sentences with prepositions.
(b) The drawing out of vowel sounds.
(c) Widespread use of the double negative.
(d) Dangling participles.

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

15. How did Janisse and her siblings get access to books which they knew would garner their father's disapproval?
(a) They borrowed them from friends and read them only in the junkyard when their father was not around.
(b) They waited for the Bookmobile to make a stop in town and spent hours inside the van reading forbidden titles.
(c) They bought them from garage sales and sneaked them home in their backpacks.
(d) They sneaked them home from the library within their clothes and sandwiched them between acceptable volumes.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the official designation of the longleaf pine's status, as stated by the National Biological Service?

2. In Chapter 4, Built by Fire, what two natural elements does Janisse pit against one another in her personification-laden story?

3. What breed was the dog that Frank treated with painkillers and saved after it had been hit by a car on the highway?

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

5. For what reason did Frank throw out the family's television set when Janisse's little sister Kay was a baby?

(see the answer keys)

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