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

2. Who was Foster Sellers and how did he play a role in the children's junkyard games?

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. Why did the town of Brunswick have a distinctive smell?

5. What object did Frank create out of driveshafts, hollow metal rods, and fence wire?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the passage regarding the bank robber Foster Sellers exhibit the theme of identity prevalent throughout the memoir?

2. Why did Janisse look forward so much to the days when Frank shopped at Winn-Dixie?

3. Whose idea was it to spread old shoes around underneath the grapevine and what was the intended purpose of that act?

4. 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?

5. How does Janisse describe her feelings toward her father when he was mentally unwell?

6. How does Janisse Ray use her great-grandfather Pun's career progression to show how white-collar jobs can be even more damaging to the environment than can blue-collar jobs?

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

8. How does the Thingfinders Club play into the memoir's message regarding ecology?

9. The second sentence of the chapter entitled Timber says, "About the same time, the production of naval stores in North Carolina began to wane and big turpentine producers in North Carolina sashayed into Georgia" 99). What is the effect of the author's choice of the verb "sashayed" and what is her purpose in making that choice?

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 theme of fear within the memoir. What is the author telling the reader about the nature of fear, about the harm that fear can inflict, and about the methods people can use to combat it?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Look for instances within the memoir that list stereotypes people from areas other than the southern United States have in their minds about residents of the South. What passages and incidents are used by the author in order to portray these stereotypes and what incidents does she use to dispel these myths for the reader?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,538 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample