Hello there! Today we have a sweet challenge for you: exam-type multiple choice questions on a poem. And we also look at how to use the past perfect tense correctly. Have fun!

READING POETRY CAREFULLY

Read this poem two or three times before you attempt to answer the questions that follow it. Check page 6B for answers. Study carefully the answers you got wrong, and make sure you understand why they were not considered the correct answers.

A song in the front yard

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face. Gwendolyn Brooks

1. The speaker in the poem is

(A) a mother talking to her daughter.

(B) a young girl who wants to go out and play.

(C) a girl who wishes she didn’t have to abide by her mother’s strict

rules of behavior.

(D) a well brought- up girl who sneers at poor people.

2. The speaker expresses regret that

(A) she has no make-up on.

(B) she is allergic to roses.

(C) her life has been respectable and boring. (D) George is going to jail

3. She thinks her childhood would be more fun if she could i. stay out later in the evening. ii. wear black lace. iii. play with kids down the alley. iv. put on make-up.

(A) iii and iv

(B) i and iii

(C) ii and iv

(D) all of the above 4. The phrase ‘charity children’ refers to

(A) poor children who depend on the kindness of others. (B) children from the orphanage.

(C) children who make a practice of being charitable. (D) children who steal.

5. Which of the following is the mother’s opinion?

(A) George went to jail last winter for selling a gate.

(B) George is certain to end up in jail eventually

(C) the authorities are not getting George to jail in a timely manner. (D) the authorities should have put George in jail sooner.

6. The speaker says she’d ‘like to be a bad woman’ because

(A) she wants to wear fashionable clothes and make-up when she gets

big.

(B) she thinks that being a bad woman means dressing in ‘brave

stockings.’

(C) she thinks she would look good in make-up.

(D) she does not understand that her mother suspects Johnnie Mae will

end up as a prostitute.

7. The mother ‘sneers’ because

(A) she does not believe the kids in the alley actually have ‘wonderful

fun.’

(B) she is a very haughty woman.

(C) she is mocking her daughter.

(D) she does not want her daughter to admire the children in the alley.

8. The rose in stanza 1 suggests

(A) the girl’s beauty.

(B) that the girl is the product of a cultured, respectable upbringing. (C) beauty that gets sick and dies.

(D) someone pretty but prickly.

9. The rose in the front yard and the ‘untended and hungry weed’ in the back yard are, respectively, _______________ for children who are carefully raised and children whose training is neglected.

(A) personifications (B) comparisons (C) similes (D) metaphors

10. The mother in the poem is

(A) anxious to keep her daughter away from the bad influences in the

neighbourhood.

(B) unfriendly and judgmental towards women who wear make-up and

black stockings.

(C) eager for George to be punished for his criminal behavior.

(D) suspicious that her daughter is misbehaving.

11. Which of these statements is accurate? The poem (A) has a regular rhyme scheme.

(B) is an example of free verse.

(C) uses rhyme strategically.

(D) has regular stanzas.

12. The poem is written from the point of view of

(A) a charity child who envies the advantages her rich neighbour

enjoys.

(B) an educated mother in a poor neighbourhood.

(C) a protected child who naively envies the freedom that other kids

enjoy.

(D) a social worker who is interested in methods of child-raising.

CAUGHT IN THE SLIPS

The sign read: Collin’s Snackette. (Incorrect)