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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 term does the girl use to refer to the boy after he describes how an echo works?

2. The boy says that when the man gets in one of his melancholy moods, he never takes what action?

3. How many children does the family count as they walk out to the plane to be deported?

4. In a conversation with the boy, the woman claims that which book is "about human nature" (161)?

5. The boy uses information from his pediatrician to determine that children usually do not retain memories made before what age?

Short Essay Questions

1. What event causes the boy to become unhappy for the first time since he and the girl had set out on their journey together?

2. Discuss how the boy's reunion with the girl comes about after their separation and include discussion of the boy's reaction to their reunion.

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

4. 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)?

5. In what way does the motif of music enter the part of the narrative when the boy and girl enter a diner to get some water?

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

7. Which section of the fifth elegy causes the woman to stop reading to the boy?

8. What simile does the boy use to describe his relationship with the woman's mother?

9. How does the boy answer the woman's queries about the procedures he would follow if he and the girl ever became lost? What is the woman's reaction to the boy's answer?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze Luiselli’s focus on the plight of refugee children depicted in Lost Children Archive. What message is Luiselli sending about this social issue?

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

Analyze the ways in which the themes of adaptability and resignation appear within Luiselli’s novel Lost Children Archive. What message is Luiselli sending about these two themes over the course of the narrative?

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