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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 does the horse say is sometimes "brave and magnificent" (67)?

2. What does the horse tell the fox about being interesting?

3. What does the boy say he is afraid they will find out about him?

4. Who does the boy think believes in him more than he believes in himself?

5. What does the horse tell the boy is true about everyone?

Short Essay Questions

1. When the boy points out that the fox hardly ever talks, what does the fox say, and how does the horse react?

2. What does the horse say is the most important thing, and why?

3. When the boy realizes that his friends know all about him, what does he ask and what do they answer?

4. What is funny about one of the drawings that is about perfection?

5. What do the mole and the horse teach the boy about perfection?

6. How does the art change when the boy falls into the water?

7. What is funny about the answer to the boy's question about the moon?

8. There are two separate sets of pictures of the four friends playing together. What is different about the second set of images?

9. The horse asks the other three what their reasons are for keeping going. What do they say?

10. What does the boy say about doing "nothing" with friends, (47), and what causes him to say it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why is the mole so obsessed with cake? Write an essay in which you explain the mole's relationship to cake and what you think this is saying about life.

Essay Topic 2

When the boy and the mole are looking into the water at their reflections, they notice that although the outside is what shows, everything important happens on the inside. Write an essay that explains this idea and gives examples of how this affect people in "real" life.

Essay Topic 3

The pairing of words and images is important in this book. Choose a page on which there are both image and text and write about how the two relate to one another: be sure to explain why the two together communicate more than either one would alone.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 809 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample