Zeroteenth Birthday Book Quiz, Part 3!

The third, and final, part of our quiz!  Scroll down for the answers.  Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here.

1.       Which of the following is an epistolary novel?

a.       Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

b.      Heidi

c.       Daddy Long-Legs

d.      In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson

2.       In Sisters, Raina is afraid of:

a.       Snakes

b.      Spiders

c.       Cockroaches

d.      Dogs

3.       In Half Magic, the children must hold what when they make their wish?

a.       A magic wand

b.      A coin

c.       A letter

d.      A key

4.       In The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Jamie cheats at which card game?

a.       Poker

b.      Crazy Eights

c.       War

d.      Spit

5.       In The Pain and the Great One, both children think:

a.       The other is keeping a secret from him/her

b.      Their parents love the other one best

c.       The other is smarter than him/her

d.      The other is actually adopted

6.       Eloise lives in which New York hotel?

a.       The Plaza

b.      The Waldorf Astoria

c.       The Soho Grand

d.      The Chelsea Hotel

7.       Little Women is set during which war?

a.       The Revolutionary War

b.      The War of 1812

c.       The Civil War

d.      The Spanish-American War

8.       The last book in the Anne of Green Gables series AND the 4^th and 5^th books of the All-of-a- Kind Family series take place during which war?

a.       World War I

b.      The Vietnam War

c.       The Korean War

d.      World War II

9.        In which TWO books, is someone cured of paralysis and can walk again?

a.       The Secret Garden and A Little Princess

b.      Heidi and The Secret Garden

c.       Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and A Little Princess

d.      Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Heidi

10.   In The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Claudia and Jamie try to figure out the    provenance of what kind of artwork?

a.       A sculpture

b.      A painting

c.       A photograph

d.      A collage
   

Bonus question: What book does the word "zeroteen" come from?

a. Ramona's World
b. Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst
c. Completely Clementine
d. Smile


























Answers:  1. c, 2. a, 3. b, 4.c, 5, b, 6. a, 7. c, 8. a, 9. b, 10. a
Bonus: a.

How did you do?

Zeroteenth Birthday Book Quiz! (Part 2)

And here is part 2... Scroll to the bottom for the answers.  Part 1 can be found here, and part 3 here.

Birthday girl with one of her birthday books

1.       Where does Frances run away to in A Baby Sister for Frances?

a.       Under the sink

b.      Under the table

c.       The backyard

d.      The hall closet

2.       What category of names does Clementine call her brother?

a.       Fruit names

b.      Flower names

c.       Descriptive names (e.g. Patience, Charity)

d.      Vegetable names

3.       Back in China, Shirley Temple Wong was known as:

a.       Rascal

b.      Bandit

c.       Smuggler

d.      Wrangler

4.       Which of the following is a girl?

a.       Sal in When You Reach Me

b.      George in Nancy Drew

c.       Georges in Liar and Spy

d.      Laurie in Little Women

5.       Which of the following children do NOT cut or dye their own or someone else’s hair?

a.       Anastasia Krupnik

b.      Elisa and Russell Michaels

c.       Betsy, Tacy, and Tib

d.      Anne of Green Gables

6.       In Breathing Room, the main character is ill with:

a.       Pneumonia

b.      Bronchitis

c.       Whooping cough

d.      Tuberculosis

7.       In Out of My Mind, the main character can’t speak because:

a.       She has cerebral palsy

b.      She was hit by lightening

c.       She is deaf and only communicates in sign language

d.      She doesn’t want to

8.       In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Fudge swallows:

a.       A goldfish

b.      A quarter

c.       A turtle

d.      Dog food
 

9.       Sheila Tubman is NOT afraid of:

a.       Dogs

b.      Lightning

c.       Swimming

d.      Heights

10.   In The Secret Garden, Mary moves to England from:

a.       Australia

b.      India

c.       Canada

d.      South Africa

Answers: 1. b, 2. d, 3. b, 4. b, 5. a, 6. d, 7. a, 8. c, 9. d, 10. b.

Zeroteenth Birthday Book Quiz! (Part 1)

For my daughter's zeroteenth (aka 10th) birthday party, I put together a 30-question book trivia quiz for her book-loving friends.  The kids did really well - I think the questions were too easy!  Since I was unable to figure out how to make one of those fancy buzzfeed-type quizzes, I went the old-fashioned route.  Scroll all the way to the bottom for the answers.  30 questions are a lot, so I'll post them in 3 installments of 10 each.  Part 2 can be found here and Part 3 can be found here.  Good luck!

Birthday balloon bouquet

1.        In All-of-A-Kind Family, which girl refuses to eat her soup?

a.       Gertie

b.      Sarah

c.       Henny

d.      Charlotte

2.       In the Ramona books, what game that Henry and Beezus like to play does Ramona
  always ruin?

a.       Chess

b.      Checkers

c.       Tiddlywinks

d.      Twister

3.       In Where the Wild Things Are, the Wild Things have:

a.       A fancy ball

b.      A board game competition

c.       A wild rumpus

d.      A dance party

4.       In the Little House on the Prairie books, Mary becomes:

a.       Blind

b.      Deaf

c.       Mute

d.      Paralyzed

5.       In Anne of Green Gables, when Anne is upset she says she is:

a.       Feeling blue

b.      Down in the dumps

c.       Sadder than a soggy potato chip

d.      In the depths of despair

6.       A frindle is really a:

a.       Pencil

b.      Piece of chalk

c.       Pen

d.      Computer

7.       In When You Reach Me, what game show does Miranda’s mother compete on?

a.       The Price is Right

b.      Wheel of Fortune

c.       Jeopardy!

d.      The $20,000 Pyramid
 

8.       Which character accidentally mails dog poop instead of her mother’s artwork?

a.       Clementine

b.      Anastasia Krupnik

c.       Ramona Quimby

d.      Sheila Tubman

9.       In one of the All-of-a-Kind Family books, the girls go to the library and pick out which  
  book?

a.       Heidi

b.      Treasure Island

c.       Anne of Avonlea

d.      Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

10.   Which of these does Ramona NOT do?

a.      Take one bite out of each of the apples in the basement

b.      Bake her doll in her sister’s birthday cake

c.      Get paint on her hands and leave handprints all over her house

d.    Lock Henry's dog in the bathroom

Answers: 1. b, 2. b, 3. c, 4. a, 5. d, 6. c, 7. d, 8. b, 9. c, 10. d.

How did you do?

A is for Anastasia

My daughter is reading the Anastasia books, which I loved as a kid.  I even reread the first one a few years ago in an attempt to figure out when my daughter might be ready for them.  Despite that, I got one fact about Anastasia very wrong.

In the first book in the series Anastasia lives in an apartment (her family later moves, to her initial horror, to the suburbs) with her hippie, artsy, uber-liberal parents (when a friend says his family donates to the March of Dimes, she responds that hers donates to the ACLU).  Her mom is a painter; her dad, a bearded English professor and poet.  They are straightforward with her about sex, bad words, feelings, and life in general.  They don't care about being like everyone else - in fact, they prefer not to be.  They celebrate Christmas but, to me, have a very Jewish sensibility.  The first book in the series was written in 1979.

Given that description, where do you think they would live?

New York, right?  The Upper West Side, back it when it was home to artist-intellectuals who had rent-controlled apartments.  Back when it was a bad neighborhood.  Back before the artists moved to (had to move to) Brooklyn (or even Queens!). 

Wrong!  Cambridge, Massachussetts.  Now, I guess this faulty recollection says more about me, the New York-centric reader than the characters, but still... I just cannot believe they are not Upper West Siders!!

Wherever she "lives," Anastasia is a treasure.  What other series could have both me and my 9-year-old daughter laughing out loud as we read separate books in the series silently to ourselves?  I can't think of any!

It is clear that Anastasia's parents have talked to her frankly about sex and growing up, but those issues do not dominate the books and, when they are included, often have a comic twist to them.  Having been written in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, these issues are also given a much-welcome lighter touch than I would think they would be given today.  When Anastasia develops what is pretty clearly a platonic crush on her female gym teacher, her mother reassures her that she is normal, but stops there.  No long discussion about homosexuality.  Not that books that do treat those issues differently aren't needed as well.

I also love the fact that Anastasia's parents, Myron and Katherine, are well-developed characters with their own interests (her poet father also loves classical music) and foibles.  While they mostly deal with Anastasia's, and her little brother Sam's, trials and tribulations (Sam has, in the years since I was the target audience for these books, gotten his own series), with patience and good humor, they too have their limits.  It is so refreshing to read a book where the parents are not killed off, are not caricatures, and are not absent whether physically or emotionally.  The Krupniks take their place in the pantheon of wonderful fictional parents, along with the Quimbys, as I discussed here.

Don't let the covers put you off (some have been updated - and not necessarily for the better!).  The books are not dated at all.  Go check them out of the library, then sneak them for yourself.  Now.

P.S. One day as I was checking the school library's catalog to see which of the Anastasia books we had, a third-grade girl, waiting for her turn to speak to me, spied the titles I was looking at and said, "Oh, Anastasia!  It's so sad what happened to her."  I paused, wracking my brain.  Nothing very bad happens to Anastasia.  But then I got it!  "Do you mean the Russian princess?," I asked.  She did.

P.P.S. I can think of few other authors with the range of Lois Lowry.  It's hard to imagine the same person writing the Anastasia books, The Giver (which I have not read), a Dear America book about a Shaker community in Maine during World War I, Number the Stars, about the Danish Resistance in World War II, and many others.

Sibling Math: The Age Gap and New Baby as Plot Device

I'm sure you've noticed how authors (and TV sitcom writers) often add a new baby to a family as a way to give them new plotlines.  (Weddings, the other big TV plot device, are not, for obvious reasons, as prevalent in children's books.)  But did you ever notice how siblings in books are often spaced far apart?  Off the top of my head, I can think of the Ramona books (Beezus is 5 years older than Ramona, Roberta almost 10 years younger), Peter and Fudge and eventually Tootsie Hatcher (there's a 5 year age difference between Peter and Fudge and 8 or 9 between Peter and Tootsie) of the Fudge series and, in the books about Anastasia Krupnik, the title character and her little brother Sam (with an age gap of around 10 years).  Less well-known, Johanna Hurwitz's Riverside Kids books also feature siblings with a big age gap: Russell Michaels is 5 years older than his sister Elisa, who in turn is 4 or 5 years older than their new baby brother.

The reason, I think, is that the dialogue and action between the two siblings can be a lot funnier this way.  A two-year-old can't really star in a chapter book... unless he has a much older sibling who reacts to his antics.  There are, of course, books about siblings much closer in age (The Pain and the Great One, another Judy Blume series comes to mind) but I did find it striking that several of the best-loved children's books have brothers and sisters who are pretty far apart, age-wise.

Can you think of other fictional siblings with a big age gap?