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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. What happens when Brother begins to dance Aunt Nicey around after they reveal that Doodle can walk?
(a) Mama tells him to stop immediately.
(b) She steps hard on his toe.
(c) Aunt Nicey falls down.
(d) Doodle starts to imitate them.

2. In the place name "Horsehead Landing," what does the word "landing" mean?
(a) A dock or other place for boats to transfer people and cargo to land.
(b) A place where planes touch down.
(c) The annual size of a catch of fish from a particular body of water.
(d) A flat place between two flights of stairs.

3. What does Brother say causes him to run home during the storm?
(a) Cruelty.
(b) Disappointment.
(c) Shame.
(d) Fear.

4. Where do Doodle and Brother imagine living when they are older?
(a) In a treehouse.
(b) New York City.
(c) In a houseboat.
(d) Old Woman Swamp.

5. What causes Brother to say that Doodle is a "burden in many ways" (3)?
(a) Doodle talks almost all the time.
(b) The doctor has made a long list of rules for taking care of Doodle.
(c) Doodle is getting too heavy for Brother to pull in the cart.
(d) Brother's friends make fun of Doodle.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Doodle's real name?

2. Doodle has an active mind and talks a lot. What is his family's reaction to this?

3. What is the first problem the family's crops have in the year that Brother is training Doodle?

4. The sentence "Mama once said, 'And bless the Pearsons, whose boy Joe was lost at Belleau Wood'" (8) is an example of which literary technique?

5. Who is the only person who does not expect Doodle to die soon after his birth?

Short Essay Questions

1. What changes in the narrator's life when Daddy makes Doodle a cart?

2. When Mama tells "Brother" that Doodle might be mentally disabled, what does "Brother" plan to do, and what changes his mind?

3. When the family get excited and try to hug "Brother" for teaching Doodle to walk, how does "Brother" react, and why?

4. When Doodle collapses during their "training," what conversation do he and "Brother" have and how does the conversation show their different attitudes about Doodle's disability?

5. Whenever Doodle wants to quit trying to learn how to walk, how does "Brother" motivate him to keep trying?

6. When "Brother" dances around with Aunt Nicey to celebrate Doodle walking, what happens, and why it is it ironic?

7. How old is Doodle when he learns to walk, and why is his age relevant to him learning to walk?

8. What does the narrator make Doodle do in the barn loft, and how does Doodle react?

9. When the boys are almost ready to show the family that Doodle can walk and they keep hinting that they have a big secret, what does Nicey tell them and what is its thematic significance?

10. Where is the grindstone and what is its symbolic meaning?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,005 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample