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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why did Frank abandon after only a year the church he had founded when his children were small?
(a) He did not know how he could make enough money as a preacher in order to support his large family.
(b) He wanted to move the family to a different county.
(c) He did not think his growing congregation was devoted enough to their faith.
(d) He felt that God had not officially or personally called him to preach.

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

3. When her brothers did not want to play school, what would Janisse do instead?
(a) Ask her mom to come be her pretend student.
(b) Enlist her little sister as a 'baby pupil'.
(c) Line up her dolls and pretend to teach them instead.
(d) Pretend to be both teacher and student.

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

5. What does the term bricoleur mean?
(a) A term given to a manipulative person.
(b) A term given to a bread-maker who uses only natural ingredients.
(c) A term given to someone who cannot see a situation from another's perspective.
(d) A term given to folk recyclers, those who find purposes for castaway objects in which others cannot see a value.

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

7. Why did the town of Brunswick have a distinctive smell?
(a) There was a paper mill in town that emitted the smell of rotten eggs.
(b) There was frequent spreading of fertilizer on the crops to keep the soil fertile.
(c) The town's main street was lined with magnolia trees.
(d) The river that flowed through town had been polluted by the nearby sewage treatment plant.

8. 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 sneaked them home from the library within their clothes and sandwiched them between acceptable volumes.
(d) They bought them from garage sales and sneaked them home in their backpacks.

9. In the Introduction, Janisse describes where she goes to find herself among what has been and what remains. Where is that place?
(a) The willow tree where she experienced her first kiss.
(b) The swath of huckleberry bushes deep in the forest behind her childhood home.
(c) Her grandmother's and grandfather's graves in the cemetery.
(d) The mouth of the Altamaha River.

10. 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 microscope kit.
(d) A marble globe.

11. 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 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.
(b) Frank lay in the yard for two days, refusing to get up.
(c) Frank cooked a rat and prepared to eat it for dinner.
(d) Frank walked into town while naked.

12. 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?
(a) The Red Hills from the mouth of the Altamaha River.
(b) The Military Reservation from the Atlantic Coastal Plain.
(c) The plains of New Brunswick from the piedmont.
(d) The piedmont from the Atlantic coastal plain.

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

14. How did Janisse and her brothers covertly celebrate Christmas one year without their father's knowledge?
(a) They went caroling in a neighborhood across town.
(b) They met at a friend's house and watched It's a Wonderful Life on television.
(c) They used headlights from the salvaged cars to make a string of high-powered Christmas lights as decorations for their tree house.
(d) They decorated a tree deep in the forest and exchanged gifts with one another.

15. 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 possum's tail.
(c) Bare as a blank sheet of paper.
(d) Bare as a sand dune.

Short Answer Questions

1. Though Frank did not graduate from high school, Janisse cited two other forms of education that Frank sought out and received. What were those two sources of education?

2. 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?

3. How often does Janisse say thunderstorms happened in the summer in their area of Georgia?

4. When Janisse's family said grace before each meal, each child in the family was required to say something. What were they required by Frank to say?

5. When Janisse's parents tell the the children the stories of their births, where do they say Janisse was found?

(see the answer keys)

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