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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many acres did Janisse's family's land take up, including the family home and her father Frank's junkyard?

2. What prompted Frank to buy out his father Charlie's share of the salvage business?

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

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?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the effect on the reader when in the chapter entitled Junkyard, Janisse writes, "I was six the year mental illness stole my father," (77) and how does the author create that effect?

2. Due to their parents' religious beliefs and their resulting family rules, what were some of the practices forbidden to Janisse and her siblings?

3. Why do people call certain parts of the wood of the longleaf pine "fat-lightered"?

4. What elements did Frank consider crucial to the business of buying?

5. On page 79, Janisse includes the text of a letter her father Frank wrote to her. In the letter, Frank wrote that he was thankful for his mental illness and that it had taught him seven lessons. What were three of those lessons he said mental illness had taught him?

6. When Janisse wrote that her father Frank was a "mechanic in the word's truest sense," what did she mean?

7. What example of making something out of nothing does Janisse write about when showing her father Frank's ingenuity in the chapter entitled, "Native Genius"?

8. Besides the fact that he thought it had better prices than other stores, why did Frank shop at Winn-Dixie?

9. What happened during one of the Ray family's only vacations that highlighted the fact that they were a subject of fascination for others?

10. After explaining that "Ninety-eight percent of the presettlement longleaf pine barrents in the southeastern coastal plains were lost by 1986" (16), Janisse writes that she did not know about this loss as a child. However, she states, "But it is a loss that as an adult shadows every step I take" (16). What does she mean?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the author's infrequent and therefore prominent use of second person within her memoir. What is the context for each of these instances and what effect does the author intend these usages of second person language to have upon the reader?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the characterization methods the author uses in order to depict her father Frank's personality and worldview.

Essay Topic 3

What is the significance of Janisse Ray's story in the chapter entitled Leaving about the first time she saw the word environmentalism in action? What lessons did she learn that day--about herself and about the world? And what lessons does she hope to teach the reader while relaying her account of this event?

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This section contains 1,368 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample