View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 pigeon.
(b) A robin.
(c) A woodpecker.
(d) A heron.

2. When Janisse tells her father repeatedly that she does not like her piano lessons, what does she say she would rather be doing?
(a) She would rather be helping her mother sew.
(b) She would rather be peeling potatoes.
(c) She would rather be outside.
(d) She would rather be learning how to fix cars.

3. What nickname did Frank call his wife, Lee Ada?
(a) Cook.
(b) Cookie.
(c) Cooks.
(d) Cookins.

4. When Janisse was very small and used to hide from her mother in the junkyard, what remedy did her mother use in order to find her?
(a) She lured her with the promise of peaches.
(b) She tied jingle bells onto Janisse's shoes.
(c) She called the sheriff to come search for Janisse among the junk.
(d) She waited until Janisse's father got home and sent him to find Janisse.

5. What prompted Frank to buy out his father Charlie's share of the salvage business?
(a) Frank fights too often with Charlie, making the workplace too tense.
(b) Charlie wants to move to Florida to pick oranges for a living.
(c) Charlie cares only about living paycheck to paycheck, but Frank wants to do more than just survive.
(d) Frank discovers that Charlie has been siphoning money from the business into his own pockets.

6. How did Janisse and her siblings get access to books which they knew would garner their father's disapproval?
(a) They sneaked them home from the library within their clothes and sandwiched them between acceptable volumes.
(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 borrowed them from friends and read them only in the junkyard when their father was not around.

7. What constituted Janisse's and her brothers' very favorite game within the junkyard?
(a) Chasing each other along the tops of salvaged cars.
(b) Pretending to be paramedics saving car accident victims.
(c) Playing church.
(d) Making believe they were car salespeople.

8. 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) His new friend spiked his lunch with LSD.
(b) He had not eaten for several days and it had affected his mental state.
(c) He found out Lee Ada had been unfaithful.
(d) He suddenly remembered a particularly violent episode involving his father.

9. 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 hoped that the slowly decomposing leather would leech nitrogen to fertilize the plants.
(d) He believed that shoes were good luck for living things.

10. By what year had virtually all of the longleaf pines been felled, leaving only .001 percent of its former numbers?
(a) 1890.
(b) 1950.
(c) 1930.
(d) 1990.

11. How many acres did Janisse's family's land take up, including the family home and her father Frank's junkyard?
(a) 4 acres.
(b) 20 acres.
(c) 10 acres.
(d) 15 acres.

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

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

14. For what reason did Frank throw out the family's television set when Janisse's little sister Kay was a baby?
(a) He did not want the knowledge of violence to reach his children.
(b) He did not want his children to find out about romance and sexuality before he was ready.
(c) He thought his wife Lee Ada watched too many soap operas.
(d) He was angry when he found the children watching cartoons instead of completing their chores.

15. 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 knew a thunderstorm would come soon and wash the board clean.
(b) Because she knew her brothers liked to clean the board off with the hose.
(c) Because she knew she could come back out after dinner and play by herself.
(d) Because she liked to start off the next lesson by punishing her brothers for some imagined misbehavior by making them clean the chalkboard.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Frank use to beat Janisse and her brothers after they stood by while a neighbor boy killed a snapping turtle?

2. On the outskirts of what town is the junkyard where Janisse spent her childhood?

3. What did Frank's children begin to watch for as a sign that he was entering a manic phase of his mental illness?

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

5. 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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 978 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample