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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. What was the catalyst for the "opening" of Janisse's heart referenced in the chapter title How the Heart Opens?

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

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

4. What nickname did Frank call his wife, Lee Ada?

5. How often did the car crusher make a visit to the family junkyard?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. Janisse said there was only one type of occasion that did not elicit shame from her role as a junkyard owner's daughter. What is the only thing that occurs that does not bring her shame?

4. 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?

5. What reasons does Janisse give for God disliking pine plantations?

6. What are some ways in which Janisse shows her parents that she is a tomboy who likes to be outside in nature more than she enjoys any other activities?

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

8. What descriptions of her homeland does Janisse give in order to support her claim that her "homeland is about as ugly as a place gets" (13)?

9. 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?

10. How is foreshadowing used within Janisse's relation of how she used to love to play teacher with her brothers or even with her dolls?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain the significance of the memoir's title. What does it mean and how does it contain all of the main themes put forth within the whole of the memoir?

Essay Topic 2

Explain the significance of Janisse Ray's abject rejection of her great-grandfather Pun's advice to not "take more on your heart than you can shake off on your heels." How does her rejection of this maxim relate to the larger themes within the memoir?

Essay Topic 3

Examine the appendices included at the end of the memoir. Why does the author include them and what message is the author sending to the reader by encouraging their use?

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