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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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 they'd found her in a basket on their doorstep.
(c) That she'd been delivered in the parking lot of the hospital.
(d) That she'd been brought by a stork.

5. What was the catalyst for the "opening" of Janisse's heart referenced in the chapter title How the Heart Opens?
(a) Her father's healing from his mental illness.
(b) Her brother's decision to become a minister.
(c) Her discovery of her love for painting.
(d) Her fascination with the carnivorous pitcher plant.

6. What did Frank use to beat Janisse and her brothers after they stood by while a neighbor boy killed a snapping turtle?
(a) A ruler.
(b) A belt.
(c) A wooden paddle.
(d) A wooden spoon.

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

8. 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.

9. 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?
(a) Cooking skills he had learned from his mother-in-law, Beulah, and sales skills he had absorbed from his father Charlie.
(b) Knowledge about politics he gleaned from his friend Curtis Hamilton, a former state senator, and street smarts he learned from his father Charlie.
(c) Survival skills he learned from growing up with an abusive father and enrollment at an auto mechanics school.
(d) Enrollment at a business school downtown and the math instruction he received from his grandfather while learning to survey.

10. What is NOT one of the dangers Janisse's father Frank mentions when warning the children about the treacherous junkyard?
(a) A bad cut.
(b) Plague.
(c) Lockjaw.
(d) Poisoning.

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

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 telling him that the children would be better off without him.
(b) By telling him that he could live in the old van down by the river.
(c) By giving him all the money she had.
(d) By calling the police and threatening to have him recommitted.

13. Janisse references a line of literature that may be the original source of the term 'Cracker': Who wrote the line, "What cracker is this same that deafes our eares with this abundance of superfluous breath?"
(a) John Donne.
(b) Christopher Marlowe.
(c) William Shakespeare.
(d) William Faulkner.

14. 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 play the piano and how to tie a good knot.
(c) How to fight and how to fish.
(d) How to find huckleberry patches and how to make a raft.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the oldest age to which longleaf pines can live?

2. For how many years does Janisse say her family had been in Appling County, Georgia?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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