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. In Chapter 5, how many people were allowed to go to the village at a time?

2. What color were Svetlana's eyes?

3. What design was on the wallpaper in Esther's room?

4. How many rooms did the hut have where the Rudomins moved in Chapter 9?

5. What group of people did Esther see in Rubtsovsk?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the Rudomins learn that Solomon had died? Another deportee from a labor camp, a former lawyer, came to see the Rudomins. He told them that Solomon had died from pneumonia.

2. When Esther returned from taking the matchbox filled with jewels to her grandmother, who was at the door?

3. Why did Esther refuse to go to nursery school when she was four?

4. What could Esther see from the top of Castle Hill?

5. Why were the prisoners called for a meeting in Chapter 5?

6. What did Esther pray when the moon came up the first night she spent at the gypsum mine?

7. What did Esther and her grandmother buy in Rubtsovsk?

8. How did everyone help Esther prepare herself for school?

9. How did Great-grandmother Reisa die?

10. How did Easter feel when she got off the train in Chapter 3?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Esther and her mother and grandmother struggled to survive when Samuel was sent to the front. Discuss ingenuity and how the women used ingenuity to survive.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss traditions that the Rudomin family had to prevent bad luck and promote good luck and whether the Rudomins seriously believed that good or bad luck could be fostered by something like getting out of bed properly.

Essay Topic 3

The baracholka provided hope. Discuss the baracholka and why it provided hope to the Rudomins and to the native peoples who attended it.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 707 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample