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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. The woman believes that her voice as a mother needs to serve "as a" (160) what to her children's worlds?

2. From what town does the boy plan to hop aboard a train while in the company of the girl?

3. On the family's way to the airport near Roswell, the boy requests a song about David Bowie that focuses on what kind of a person?

4. Which member of the family is named as having "arranged all the chaos around" the family "into a world" (184)?

5. What sort of body of water is contained in the part of Elegies for Lost Children that the woman reads to the boy?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. 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.

4. For what length of time has the family been driving when the boy asks the woman to play a David Bowie song in the car?

5. What is the woman's philosophy about answering the questions of the boy and girl?

6. 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)?

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

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

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

10. What question does the boy nervously ask the woman during a discussion about the novel Lord of the Flies?

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

Look carefully at the passages of Lost Children Archive that describe the close relationship between the boy and the girl at the center of the text. What is Luiselli’s purpose for discussing at length the nature of the connection between the boy and the girl?

Essay Topic 3

Sensory details are used frequently by Luiselli in order to create vivid pictures of each character's progression through the narrative of Lost Children Archive. Choose three scenes in which sensory details are heavily used and discuss how the sensory details used serve Luiselli’s creation of vivid characters to populate the narrative.

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