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. Along what sort of pathway do the boy and the girl walk as they gradually begin to realize that they are lost?

2. What is NOT one of the water tanks the boy plans to pass along his planned route to a particular canyon?

3. The coyote threatens the children under his supervision with violence after one of children commits what transgression?

4. Once the family has decided to travel toward the airport near Roswell, for how many weeks have they been driving?

5. The woman recalls that she had been how old when her mother had left the family to "join a guerilla movement" (172)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the airplane symbolize within the Virginia Woolf epigraph at the start of Family Soundscapes: "Box IV"?

2. What items does the boy pack in preparation for the trek into the desert and eventually to Echo Canyon?

3. What major change in narration takes place at the start of the part called Reenactment?

4. What example does the boy give when he claims that the girl is "sometimes really smart" (196)?

5. What clues does the boy leave for the man and woman in regard to his and the girl's plans?

6. What commonalities does the boy find between the careers of the man and the woman?

7. In what habit does the girl often engage and what does she call her habit?

8. How does the boy plan to find the way to the town of Lordsburg and what does he plan to do once he and the girl reach Lordsburg?

9. What sight in the backseat causes the woman to relent and to grant the boy's request to play "Space Oddity" again after the "fifth or sixth time" (156)?

10. What event causes the woman to question the boy about what he would do if he and the girl ever got lost while on their own?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss Luiselli’s messages about guilt and responsibility within Lost Children Archive. Focus especially on events such as the boy’s decision to take the girl on a journey into the desert without their parents’ knowledge.

Essay Topic 2

Determine Luiselli’s message within the novel Lost Children Archive regarding the idea that the American media directly influences its citizens' thinking about the topic of immigration in manipulative and harmful ways.

Essay Topic 3

What is the function of the coyote's character within the text-within-a-text called Elegies for Lost Children? Discuss the characterization methods used by Luiselli in depicting the coyote who is paid to see that the children arrive safely in the United States. Include in your discussion the reasons that Luiselli portrays the coyote in these particular ways.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,245 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample