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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 does Mrs. Zimmerman tell Lewis to do in Chapter Nine?

2. How does Lewis feel at the beginning of Chapter Seven?

3. What does Tarby say when Lewis tries to speak to him in Chapter Nine about the graveyard?

4. What wakes up Lewis in Chapter Eight a week before Christmas?

5. What does Lewis see at the end of Chapter Seven at the Hanchett's former house?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Hammerhandle tell Lewis in Chapter Eight? What does Uncle Jonathan say in response to this?

2. What do Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman do in Chapter Six to cheer Lewis up? What happens when they are out?

3. What do Uncle Jonathan, Mrs. Zimmerman, and Lewis find when they return home in Chapter Six? What do they find inside?

4. Why does Lewis feel sick in the beginning of Chapter Seven? What does he realize he has done?

5. What does Lewis do after he talks to Tarby in Chapter Nine? What does he decide?

6. What does Lewis go to do in Chapter Nine? What does he learn there?

7. What happens in December that worries Uncle Jonathan as said in Chapter Seven?

8. Why do Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman say Isaac Izard needed a clock in Chapter Eight? What else went wrong with Izard’s plan?

9. Where does the eight ball say the magic clock is in Chapter Ten? What do they find when they go there?

10. Who moves in across the street from Barnavelt’s Folly in Chapter Seven? How is this person known in town?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Edward Gorey’s illustrations are famously known for bringing to life the atmosphere of John Bellair’s novels. How do the illustrations in the novel show select choices of scenes to illustrate? How do the illustration increase the feelings of atmosphere and fear? Write three pages with at least four textual examples.

Essay Topic 2

In the beginning of the novel, Uncle Jonathan says that magic works by using “solid everyday objects” (41). What does the novel show as the connection between the ordinary, or the everyday, and the magical, or the extraordinary? Write four pages with at least four textual examples.

Essay Topic 3

The repetition of motifs and symbols has deep roots in the Gothic tradition. What motifs and symbols are in the novel? And what genres of the Gothic are these connected to? Write three pages with at least four textual examples.

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