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 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?

It Only Took A Year...

It only took a year, but we did it!  My daughter and I finished reading all 8 books in the Anne of Green Gables series.  I gave her the first book last year, in early June, for her 9th birthday, and I was determined that we should finish before her 10th, as more literary gifts await her.  Thankfully, we met the deadline with over a week to spare.  I had visions of us staying up late in the night before her birthday in an effort to reach my self-imposed deadline.

No, we did not read Anne every night.   My younger daughter is too young for Anne, so if I only had time for joint reading, Anne didn't make the cut.  And there were times when we needed a break, a palate cleanser, when my daughter was in the mood for picture books (which she still loves, much to my delight), or something else entirely.

At times it was tough going.  The language is flowery and old-fashioned.  The middle books tend to be gossipy stories about people Anne interacts with and less about Anne herself.  And the final book, set during World War I, has lots of arcane (to my 9-year-old) references to military personnel, politicians, and battles.

But it was worth it.  There's a kind of satisfaction in finishing a series.  The other series we have done this with are the Betsy-Tacy books, the Ramona books (multiple times, but a much quicker read) and the All-of-a-Kind Family books (ditto, and sadly, the last book was quite disappointing).

I know lots of people have done the same with Harry Potter.  What other series have you read aloud to your children in their entirety?  How long did it take you?

Feeling Like Mama in All-of-A-Kind Family

We have been inundated with sickness here and now, just as Passover is about to begin, my older daughter is ill with the flu.  I can't help comparing myself to Mama in All-of-a-Kind Family, when four of her five daughters had scarlet fever and they had to listen to the seder from the sickroom (a converted bedroom).  Of course, she had it worse, with more sick ones and less modern medicine but still... Nothing like referring to a book to make me feel better!

Heresy (Or, How Laura Ingalls Wilder and I Don't Have Any Chemistry)

Right now, I'm reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder to my 6-year-old and having the same reaction to it that I did 30 years ago: it's okay.  Yup, just okay.  I know this is heresy to legions of Little House devotees (dare I say fanatics?), my sister among them, but these books just don't have the emotional resonance for me that the Ramona series or the All-of-a-Kind Family series (which a friend called, correctly, I think, "the Jewish Little House books") or, for an older audience, Anne of Green Gables, do.  Laura herself was bored during those long winters - why did she think they'd be any more interesting for her readers?  To be fair, the books are not nearly as boring as they could be, but they just don't do it for me. 

And yet, I am finally reading them to my daughter for a number of reasons.  Peer pressure was one - many of her friends are reading it too.  But I also I felt that it was part of the children's canon, books that every (girl) child should read in order to be culturally literate. 

I'm not sure what accounts for the series' appeal, but the hardships faced by Laura and her family and their lack of technology, not to mention what we consider basic creature comforts (like indoor plumbing) are fascinating to some.  But not me.  I can relate to many books that I "shouldn't" be able to - books set in a time and place I know nothing about, like Anne of Green Gables and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate but not these.  I love plenty of spunky heroines (Anne and Calpurnia again being prime examples) but for me, Laura isn't one of them.  I guess it just comes down to chemistry.  It's just not there between me and Laura.

If you or your child loves the Little House books, why? 

To Get All Meta on You: Books about Books, Libraries and Reading

Because of my aforementioned library addiction, I hold books that mention libraries and books, and those that feature readers, especially dear.  One of my favorites is the All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor.  This series follows the lives of five sisters growing up on the Jewish Lower East Side (where I grew up!) at the turn of the last century.  All but the first book are out of print, but many used copies can be found online.  There are five books in the series.

One week Sarah, the responsible, studious middle child, loses her book.  She is terrified to tell the librarian and devastated to hear of the cost to replace it.  Don't worry - it all works out in the end.  Not only that, but both the librarian and Ella, the oldest daughter, find love in or through the library.  Ella's beau (a much better word than boyfriend, don't you think?) actually introduces himself by sending her a note in a book she had hidden in the stacks.  What could be more romantic?

But the best book-within-a-book reference in this series comes in the third book (confusingly called More All-of-a-Kind Family, while the second is All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown), when Henny finds Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery the then-just-published sequel to Anne of Green Gables at the library one day. This reference sent me running to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_green_gables. 

Somehow I'd always thought that the Anne books had been written in the 1920s at least, which would have post-dated Henny's discovery.  But no, the first was published in 1908, with Anne of Avonlea coming out just a year later.  So that means some of my favorite fictional characters were enjoying another one of my favorite fictional characters - how cool is that!

Although this blog is geared more toward younger audiences (at least for now, while my own children are young), I can't write a post about books about books, reading and libraries without mentioning one for older readers, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. 

My fruitless search for an image of the edition I have (how attached we can get to the edition and cover art of a book! - only the link to All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown shows the cover art I remember from that series) did lead me to another nice discovery: that Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite essayists and novelists who has written her own book-length essay on the joys of reading http://www.amazon.com/How-Reading-Changed-My-Life/dp/0345422783/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293227557&sr=1-1, has written a foreword to this book http://www.amazon.com/Grows-Brooklyn-Betty-Quindlen-Foreword/dp/898840436X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293227517&sr=1-2.  Being me, I promptly put a library hold on this edition.

There are many lovely moments in the book describing Francie, the protagonist, taking joy in books and words and in the library itself, but the description of how Francie learns to read is simply perfect: 

"Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words!

For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word.  But one day, she look at a page and the word mouse had instantaneous meaning.  She looked at the word and the picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind.  She looked farther and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat.  The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself....

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading.  She would never be lonely again..."

And there you go.