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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What happens at ten-fifteen?
(a) A window breaks.
(b) The sprinklers begin watering the lawn.
(c) The house shuts itself down.
(d) The nursery walls come to life.

2. To what famous dog is this dog an allusion?
(a) President Lincoln's dog.
(b) Buck, from Call of the Wild.
(c) Odysseus's dog.
(d) Cerberus.

3. What is strange about how the nursery reacts to the fire?
(a) The animal images seem to be aware of the fire.
(b) The voice in the nursery walls begins singing an old children's song.
(c) The nursery deliberately opens its windows during the fire.
(d) The nursery is the only room that does not turn on its sprinklers.

4. When the story ends, what is left standing?
(a) A tree.
(b) One wall of the house.
(c) Nothing.
(d) A distant building.

5. The line "And swallows circling with their shimmering sound" is an example of which technique?
(a) Alliteration.
(b) Parallelism.
(c) Personification.
(d) Metaphor.

6. What is the house compared to as it burns to the ground?
(a) A bomb.
(b) A bonfire.
(c) A cigar.
(d) A skeleton.

7. What is unusual about the images of the African animals?
(a) Their colors.
(b) Their faces.
(c) Their shapes.
(d) Their sizes.

8. What is the first thing that the voice-clock announces?
(a) Time to get up.
(b) Time for work.
(c) It is raining.
(d) Time for breakfast.

9. What does the breakfast stove make for breakfast?
(a) Pancakes and bacon.
(b) Eggs and hash browns.
(c) Pancakes.
(d) Eggs, toast, and bacon.

10. "Seven-nine, breakfast time" is an example of which rhyming technique?
(a) Slant rhyme.
(b) Eye rhyme.
(c) Identical rhyme.
(d) End rhyme.

11. What effect is the constant repetition and rhyming of the voice-clock probably meant to have?
(a) It demonstrates a positive attitude toward technology.
(b) It reinforces the similarity of everything that the voice clock says.
(c) It echos the language of fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
(d) It stresses the forgetfulness of the family.

12. What causes the house to temporarily "give up" as the fire spreads?
(a) There is no more water.
(b) The house is waiting for the flames to reach the attic.
(c) The house is ready to "die."
(d) It has begun to rain outside.

13. To what does the phrase "the children's hour" allude?
(a) A poem by Longfellow.
(b) A fairy tale.
(c) A poem by Teasdale.
(d) A nursery rhyme.

14. In which city does the story take place?
(a) Petaluma.
(b) San Francisco.
(c) Sacramento.
(d) Allendale.

15. What is the job of the robot mice?
(a) Entertaining the children.
(b) Cleaning.
(c) Alerting the house to intruders.
(d) Entertaining the dog.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bradbury compare to Baal?

2. What does the house do with the uneaten breakfast?

3. What happens to the dog when it cannot get into the kitchen?

4. Just before the house collapses, what does it do?

5. In the sentence "The morning house lay empty," there is an example of which technique?

(see the answer keys)

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