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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 makes the baby happy?

2. How old is Teresa?

3. What does Dab see when he comes to the little room with her?

4. What does Tree feel about Miss Pricherd's arrival?

5. How does the narrator characterize the rooms in Tree's house?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator describe the atmosphere in Tree's house?

2. What does Dab experience when Tree takes him to the little room?

3. Describe the room in which Tree discovers Brother Rush.

4. How is Dab feeling when Tree goes to wake him up?

5. Describe the first time Tree sees Brother Rush.

6. What does Miss Pricherd see in the little room?

7. Describe Brother Rush as Tree first sees him.

8. What do Tree and Dab's visions foreshadow?

9. What is Tree like as a student, and as a person?

10. What does Tree tell Miss Pricherd about what she saw?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Virginia Hamilton's writing in dialect? Does it make the story easier or harder to follow? Does it make you feel like the characters are more alive, or more like puppets? Where does the dialect really work? Where does it seem like it doesn't work as well?

Essay Topic 2

What is missing from this book? What should have been covered or presented that was not? What is the effect of this absence? Describe an element that ought to have been covered, and explain why it would have made the book stronger.

Essay Topic 3

What does Dab's illness seem to be, and how important is it that we know exactly what it is? Considering how his health affects the rest of the story, does it matter what it is, exactly?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 709 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample