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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. On page 33, when Tamaya tells Chad to leave Marshall alone, what does Chad say to Tamaya?

2. What first motivated Chad to turn against Marshall?

3. When Marshall tells Tamaya he is sorry after she falls down in the woods, what is he apologizing for?

4. What does Fitzman reveal about the ergonyms in Chapter 11?

5. What reason does Marshall give Tamaya for breaking the rules and going into the woods?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Tamaya's attitude toward following rules?

2. When he is lying away on the night after Chad's attack, what does Marshall decide is his best hope for a final ending to the situation with Chad?

3. When Ms. Filbert was assigning the reports about presidents, how did her behavior contradict her words?

4. How do the stories that Chad tells help to show what kind of a person he is?

5. What do the descriptions of the outside and inside of Tamaya's house communicate about her home?

6. Describe the changes that occur in Tamaya's rash overnight in Chapter 12.

7. When he is lying awake on the night after Chad's attack, what two possible endings does Marshall imagine for a scenario where he tries to defend Tamaya from Chad?

8. What offer does Tamaya make to Marshall on their walk to school in Chapter 12, and why does she think his response is not very honest?

9. What are some of the consequences Marshall suffers at school because of Chad's bullying?

10. What irony does Jonathan Fitzman see in the senators' questions about the ergonyms escaping into the environment?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What message is conveyed through the contrast in settings in this text? Choose two settings and write an essay that compares and contrasts them and then makes a claim about what ideas are being transmitted by these similarities and differences. As you structure this essay, think about whether you want to write all about one setting and then all about the other, or whether you want to discuss similarities in one part of the essay and differences in a separate part of the essay. In either case, end your essay with a paragraph that shows what point Sachar is trying to make by creating these two separate settings. Support your ideas with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and remember that if you use quoted evidence, this should be cited in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

One effect of having multiple perspectives in a novel is that the reader gets to see events and characters from more than one perspective. Think of an event or character that seems one way when presented from either Marshall's or Tamaya's perspective but that you understand differently when the same event or character is then presented from the other character's perspective. Explain how this event or character is presented first and then show how the reader's understanding is enhanced or changed when the same event or character is seen from the perspective of a different character. Support your ideas with evidence from the text, and remember that if you use quoted evidence, this should be cited in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Think about the illustration in the outer, upper corner of each page where a new chapter begins. When readers see the first illustration, do they have any way to know what it is? Is it easy to overlook? How is this similar to the equations and Tamaya's rash? What happens to the illustration as the book progresses? Think about not just the number of organisms in the Petri dish but the amount of attention they command as they increase in number. What does this have to do with the equations and Tamaya's rash? Eventually, the organisms in the illustration actually escape their dish and begin to spill down the margins of the page. What point is being made in these illustrations? What does this have to do with the equations and Tamaya's rash? Write an essay in which you demonstrate how these illustrations convey similar ideas to the ideas conveyed by the equations and Tamaya's rash. Support your ideas with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and remember that if you use quoted evidence, this should be cited in MLA format.

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