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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. How did Janisse and her brothers covertly celebrate Christmas one year without their father's knowledge?
(a) They used headlights from the salvaged cars to make a string of high-powered Christmas lights as decorations for their tree house.
(b) They decorated a tree deep in the forest and exchanged gifts with one another.
(c) They met at a friend's house and watched It's a Wonderful Life on television.
(d) They went caroling in a neighborhood across town.

2. For how many years does Janisse say her family had been in Appling County, Georgia?
(a) 180 years.
(b) 86 years.
(c) 210 years.
(d) 150 years.

3. What does Janisse say the source of southern Georgia's majesty and sublimity used to come from before that source was destroyed?
(a) The longleaf pine forests.
(b) The wide diversity of native bird species.
(c) The clear, unpolluted skies.
(d) Many clear springs, rivers, and waterfalls.

4. What did the children call their club whose purpose was to search the salvaged cars for valuable items?
(a) The Thingfinders Club.
(b) The Treasure Hunters.
(c) The Salvage Crew.
(d) The Oddfellows.

5. When Janisse relates that the children did not believe their birth stories, what does she say would have been a more believable story for their parents to have told about her own birth?
(a) That they had found her in the truck of a '52 Ford.
(b) That they'd found her in a basket on their doorstep.
(c) That she'd been brought by a stork.
(d) That she'd been delivered in the parking lot of the hospital.

Short Answer Questions

1. When tree farming became common practice in 1940, why was the longleaf pine rarely planted by tree farmers?

2. Though everyone was aware of Frank's predilection toward mental illness, what did everyone, including the police, agree was another possible cause of his first major nervous breakdown?

3. What prompted Frank to buy out his father Charlie's share of the salvage business?

4. What expensive item did Frank buy for the household in order to foster his childrens' interest in knowledge and learning?

5. What did Frank use to beat Janisse and her brothers after they stood by while a neighbor boy killed a snapping turtle?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Janisse Ray use her great-grandfather Pun's career progression to show how white-collar jobs can be even more damaging to the environment than can blue-collar jobs?

2. Why do people call certain parts of the wood of the longleaf pine "fat-lightered"?

3. What is the effect on the reader when in the chapter entitled Junkyard, Janisse writes, "I was six the year mental illness stole my father," (77) and how does the author create that effect?

4. Why did Janisse look forward so much to the days when Frank shopped at Winn-Dixie?

5. How does Janisse describe her feelings toward her father when he was mentally unwell?

6. What happened during one of the Ray family's only vacations that highlighted the fact that they were a subject of fascination for others?

7. After explaining that "Ninety-eight percent of the presettlement longleaf pine barrents in the southeastern coastal plains were lost by 1986" (16), Janisse writes that she did not know about this loss as a child. However, she states, "But it is a loss that as an adult shadows every step I take" (16). What does she mean?

8. Why were the conditions so favorable for Frank's junkyard business to make money?

9. The second sentence of the chapter entitled Timber says, "About the same time, the production of naval stores in North Carolina began to wane and big turpentine producers in North Carolina sashayed into Georgia" 99). What is the effect of the author's choice of the verb "sashayed" and what is her purpose in making that choice?

10. What is the author's purpose in relating the fact that her parents told their children false stories about their births?

(see the answer keys)

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