View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What did fans write to give Barbara Kingsolver?

2. What is the Heard Museum a center for?

3. What sound woke Barbara Kingsolver on her first morning in Cotonou?

4. What are Barbara Kingsolver's feelings about nuclear weapons?

5. Whose work was Barbara Kingsolver reading during this work?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Kingsolver mean by invoking the notion of stone soup?

2. What does Barbara Kingsolver see at the Hiroshima Museum?

3. What does Barbara Kingsolver say about the difference between her fiction and her non-fiction?

4. Why had Barbara Kingsolver gone to Cotonou to visit?

5. Why was Barbara Kingsolver told to 'love it or leave it'?

6. How did Kingsolver learn to handle the question 'what is your book about'?

7. What was Barbara Kingsolver's experience with the Rock Bottom Remainders?

8. What did Barbara Kingsolver and her daughter do at the Heard Museum?

9. Why did Barbara Kingsolver take Camille to see at the Heard Museum?

10. What is Kingsolver's idea of a family in 'Stone Soup'?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Who do you think is the audience for Barbara Kingsolver's essays, and what do you think characterizes those readers? Who would be least likely to read Barbara Kingsolver, and why? What objections could readers make to her work?

Essay Topic 2

Write a character sketch of the author based on her style and content. What values does she hold dear? What are her hopes and fears? What kind of person do you think she is? Anchor your sketch in passages in the book.

Essay Topic 3

What contradictions are at the center of Barbara Kingsolver's work? What questions does she puzzle over without resolving them? What balances between irreconcilable oppositions does she strike?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 795 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample