View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The coyote in Elegies for Lost Children begins with how many children under his supervision on their way to the United States?
(a) 6.
(b) 4.
(c) 11.
(d) 7.

2. The boy says that when the man gets in one of his melancholy moods, he never takes what action?
(a) He never looks at the children.
(b) He never smiles.
(c) He never stops clenching his teeth.
(d) He never looks at his wife.

3. In what part of Mexico had the woman's mother joined a guerilla movement after leaving her family?
(a) Western.
(b) Southern.
(c) Eastern.
(d) Northern.

4. What word spoken by the girl does the boy use as an example of the girl's intermittent brilliance?
(a) Fret.
(b) Relatively.
(c) Future.
(d) Haunted.

5. With what Roman numeral is the box marked that the boy retrieves from the trunk of the family car one night?
(a) V.
(b) III.
(c) II.
(d) VII.

Short Answer Questions

1. In a conversation with the boy, the woman claims that which book is "about human nature" (161)?

2. What sort of body of water is contained in the part of Elegies for Lost Children that the woman reads to the boy?

3. In the eighth elegy of the book Elegies for Lost Children, it is revealed that the boys in the group are allowed to relieve themselves a maximum of how many times per day while riding atop the train?

4. What object does the boy throw off the cliff as part of his plan to break the silence cast upon the meal by the man and the woman?

5. After the boy and girl part company with the rancher riding a tractor, they immediately run to take what action?

Short Essay Questions

1. What items does the boy pack in preparation for the trek into the desert and eventually to Echo Canyon?

2. What question does the boy nervously ask the woman during a discussion about the novel Lord of the Flies?

3. What kind of animal does the boy wish for once he realizes that he and the girl are lost and why?

4. In what habit does the girl often engage and what does she call her habit?

5. For what length of time has the family been driving when the boy asks the woman to play a David Bowie song in the car?

6. Discuss how the boy's reunion with the girl comes about after their separation and include discussion of the boy's reaction to their reunion.

7. How does the fictional author of Elegies for Lost Children demonstrate the way in which the "man in charge" (164) despises being asked questions?

8. What bright spot does the boy say will remain in the situation even if the man and woman never find the two of them?

9. What does the reader learn by the end of Part I about the woman's own childhood?

10. What sight in the backseat causes the woman to relent and to grant the boy's request to play "Space Oddity" again after the "fifth or sixth time" (156)?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,450 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample