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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. Mom threw out the author's what in "Emergency Situation"?
(a) Comic books.
(b) Baseball cards.
(c) Fishing lures
(d) Underwear.

2. Who does the author meet at a crossroads in "I Myself"?
(a) His grandfather.
(b) His father.
(c) Himself.
(d) His grandmother.

3. What can the author remember clearly of the children of his first grade class in "First Grade"?
(a) Their stories.
(b) Their names.
(c) Their faces.
(d) Their handwriting.

4. Who wrote "What the Stones Knew"?
(a) Anzar Hitoshi.
(b) Lisa Ruth Shulman.
(c) Harryette Mullen.
(d) Robert Dana.

5. In "Almost Evenly Divided," the author's life is nearly evenly divided between being Puerto-Rican and a what?
(a) Chicagoan.
(b) San Franciscan.
(c) New Yorker.
(d) Bostonian.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is the author of "Waking Instructions"?

2. "What Gets Lost/Lo Que Se Pierde" is written by whom?

3. In "Sudden," the newspaper might have used the word "massive" if it had been a heart attack, but it used what instead?

4. What kind of tree does the author climb in "Leaving the Light On"?

5. Where does Naomi Shihab Nye live?

Short Essay Questions

1. What word did the newspaper use in "Sudden"? Why?

2. What similes are described in "Other Lives"?

3. How does the author describe his parents in "Leaving the Lights On"?

4. How is the coat described in "My Father's Coat"?

5. What does the author miss in "Song of the Prodigal Son"?

6. What personification and metaphor is used in the poem "Stranded"?

7. What does the author write about her choice to collect these poems in the Introduction?

8. How does the father feel in "Taking My Son to His First Day of Kindergarten"? What irony is described?

9. What similes are used to describe water in "Aqueducts"?

10. How does the author describe death in "The Father, Who Could Not Swim"?

(see the answer keys)

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