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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. What kind of prize does his father win?

2. At the premiere reading of the poem, who is referred to as "Bing-Bong"?

3. Shawn values the experience of having seizures so much that he would trade what in order to continue having seizures?

4. What does Shawn think about the city in which he lives?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Shawn learn to read?

2. How does Shawn describe the first signs that he will have a seizure?

3. When Shawn first heard people referred to as "vegetables," what types of images did he envision in his head?

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

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

6. Why does Shawn need medicine to control the seizures?

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

8. What does the encounter with the crow reveal to Shawn's father, and what thought occurs to him?

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

10. In Chapter 5, Shawn notes that his father has been a public figure because of the poem he writes about Shawn. Name three things that fame brings to Shawn's father.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why does Shawn love his seizures? Why does Shawn's father, on the other hand, see Shawn's seizures as a symbol of the pain he thinks Shawn experiences on a daily basis? Explore the irony of the contrast between the reality of Shawn's seizures and his father's perception of them.

Part 1) How does Shawn describe his seizures? What can he do while he is having a seizure that he cannot do at any other time?

Part 2) What is Shawn's father's perception of Shawn's seizures? What does he base his perception on? How valid are his perceptions? What does Shawn's father assume about his quality of life because of his seizures? What does Shawn think his father is planning as a result of Shawn's seizures and his father's assumption that they are painful. Why is this ironic?

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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