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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is Shawn the week before his father comes by the house?

2. When Sydney becomes famous for the poem, what famous person does he meet?

3. What does Shawn not know at the time that he sees the dog killed?

4. Why does the school district send out a school psychologist each year?

5. What does the crow do that startles Shawn and his father?

Short Essay Questions

1. How much control does Shawn have over his seizures?

2. What is Shawn's out-of-body experience like while his father is in the classroom shooting video with a cameraman?

3. How does Shawn describe his experience with grand mal seizures as a child?

4. What movements does Shawn's body make and what controls them?

5. How does Shawn use the example of George Washington to show the reader that he knows more than he is given credit for?

6. When talking to her mother, how does Cindy explain her experience with the dog's death?

7. What "techniques of making contact" does Shawn mention have not been tried on him?

8. Why does Shawn think that his father is smart?

9. Why does Shawn think that it is cool to live in Seattle?

10. What is Shawn able to do when his spirit leaves his body during a seizure?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When Shawn's father shows up at his class with a cameraman to tape footage for a PBS special on "Appropriate Allocation Decisions in an Era of Diminishing Funding," what are the similarities and differences between Shawn's father's beliefs and actions with those of Shawn's teacher and teacher's aides and how does Shawn feel about these people?

Part 1) What is the approach of Shawn's teacher and aids to the students in the class? What does Shawn think about these characters and why? How do these characters react to Shawn's father and his documentary? Why?

Part 2) While Sydney McDaniel is videotaping his special for PBS, what does he say about educating people who "cannot learn?" What does Shawn think about the points that his father makes? What in particular that his father says catches Shawn's interest in a big way?

Part 3) What are there similarities or differences between Shawn's father and the classroom teacher and aides regarding the way they think about and treat the children? What are they and why do they exist?

Essay Topic 2

One evening, Shawn is left with Vonda, his respite care provider. That evening, lying alone in the dark, Shawn hears his father come into the house. Vonda is a fan of Mr. McDaniel and asks for an autograph. How is Vonda's behavior toward Shawn and Sydney symbolic of the way they each are treated by the general population? How did this dichotomy come about? How does it affect Shawn's quality of life in general? What might it mean in particular on the night that Shawn's father's orders are followed unquestioningly? Provide examples from the novel to back up your point of view.

Essay Topic 3

Sydney McDaniel writes a poem that wins him a Pulitzer prize. This poem symbolizes everything Mr. McDaniel sees and feels about Shawn's disability. Shawn, however, has mixed feelings about the poem. He believes that the fame that the poem brings his father has made him into a professional victim. He also sees the valid benefits of the fame. Name three ways in which the poem turns Sydney into a professional victim and several ways that the fame produces valid benefits for the family.

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