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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why, at the end of summer, does Brother start to push Doodle so hard in his "training" efforts?
(a) School is coming and Doodle does not yet have the physical skills to keep up with other boys.
(b) Brother knows that when school starts, Doodle is likely to be too busy to keep training.
(c) Brother knows that when winter comes, Doodle is likely to be too ill to keep training.
(d) Harvest season is coming and Brother wants Doodle to be strong enough to help this year.

2. How does Brother motivate Doodle to keep trying to learn to walk?
(a) He shames him by making him imagine being an old man pulled around in a cart.
(b) He tells Doodle that other boys will make fun of him if he cannot walk.
(c) He reminds Doodle of how hard he worked to learn to crawl.
(d) He tells him that their mother and father will love him more if he can walk.

3. What are Doodle's last words?
(a) "I love you."
(b) "I told you."
(c) "Don't leave me!"
(d) "Don't hurt me!"

4. What draws the family's attention to the ibis?
(a) A croaking noise.
(b) The loud reaction of their chickens.
(c) A flash of red.
(d) The sound of its wings.

5. Who does Doodle suggest that Brother can marry?
(a) Their father.
(b) Their neighbor.
(c) Their mother.
(d) Their aunt.

Short Answer Questions

1. In the place name "Horsehead Landing," what does the word "landing" mean?

2. Where is the ibis perched?

3. Why does Mama make Brother return to the table when he is trying to get outside to see the ibis?

4. When, on page 8, Brother says that they kept working with "doggedness," what does he mean?

5. Who gives Doodle his nickname?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are Chateau-Thierry, Amiens, and Soissons, and how do they relate to this story?

2. When Doodle learns to walk, where does the family put his cart, and why is this symbolically appropriate?

3. How does Doodle die?

4. What changes in the narrator's life when Daddy makes Doodle a cart?

5. What is the family's reaction to Doodle when he is born?

6. What do Doodle and "Brother" do with the flowers at Old Woman Swamp?

7. When Doodle and "Brother" take up telling one another stories to pass the time, what story does Doodle tell?

8. Where is the grindstone and what is its symbolic meaning?

9. Which character says "And bless the Pearsons, whose boy Joe was lost at Belleau Wood" (8) and what does this comment foreshadow?

10. When they are eating lunch on the day the ibis appears, what argument are the brothers having?

(see the answer keys)

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