50 Fun Facts About The Glass Castle

In The Glass Castle, what is three-year-old Jeannette Walls cooking when her dress goes up in flames?

Hot dogs were boiling on the stove when her pink dress caught. After about six weeks of skin grafts, her father carried her out of the hospital without paying the bill.

At the start of The Glass Castle, what is Rose Mary Walls doing when Jeannette spots her from a taxi?

Rooting through a dumpster was how Jeannette found her, two blocks from a party. She slid down in her seat and asked the driver to turn around and take her home.

In The Glass Castle, which planet does young Jeannette Walls claim when her father offers stars as Christmas presents?

Venus was her pick, the brightest light low in the western sky. Decades later, walking Manhattan at night, she still looks for it glowing over the river.

In The Glass Castle, what does Jeannette Walls ask her father to do as her tenth birthday present?

Stop drinking was her whole wish. Rex dried out at home and stayed sober for a few months, and his relapse is what sent the family east to West Virginia.

In The Glass Castle, what ends up filling the foundation hole Jeannette and Brian Walls dig for the dream house?

Garbage went into the pit because the family could not afford the town's trash-collection fee. Rex called it a temporary measure, and the heap soon attracted a big river rat.

In The Glass Castle, which big cat does Rex Walls let his children pet through the bars of its zoo cage?

A cheetah licked Jeannette's palm, drawn, her father said, by the popcorn salt and butter on her hand. A guard soon ordered the family to leave the zoo.

In The Glass Castle, what do the hungry Walls children catch their mother secretly eating under her bedcovers?

A chocolate bar, a family-sized Hershey's already half gone, lay beside her. She sobbed that she was a sugar addict, and the four children split the rest.

In The Glass Castle, what does teenage Jeannette Walls build from a wire coat hanger and rubber bands?

Dental braces cost twelve hundred dollars, so she made her own and wore them at night. Her father called them a feat of engineering genius and said they were working.

In The Glass Castle, which career does Brian Walls take up in New York, baffling a father who hates authority?

Police officer was the job he took as soon as he turned twenty. Rex wondered where he had gone wrong raising a son who joined what he called the gestapo.

In the opening of The Glass Castle, what does Rose Mary Walls tell Jeannette to say when people ask about her parents?

The truth, she says, is simple enough. That lunchtime challenge in a Chinese restaurant launches the memoir, a story Jeannette had spent years hiding from her friends.

In The Glass Castle, who does Rex Walls claim is chasing the family when they flee bill collectors at night?

The FBI was after him, he hinted, over a dark episode he never explained. Rose Mary told the children he just found federal agents more fun than bill collectors.

In The Glass Castle, what name does Rex Walls give the family's sudden night-time moves out of town?

The skedaddle meant grabbing whatever fit in the car and leaving the rest. On one such exit Jeannette's favourite toy was left behind for good.

In The Glass Castle, what does Rex Walls call the contraption he designs to separate gold nuggets from desert rock?

The Prospector would scoop up dirt and tell gold from plain rock by its weight. Striking it rich was step one; the family's dream house was meant to come next.

Which holiday gives its name to the final part of The Glass Castle, set five years after Rex Walls's death?

Thanksgiving brings the family to Jeannette's country home, where her second husband roasts the turkey and everyone raises a toast to Rex.

In the closing toast of The Glass Castle, Rose Mary Walls says life with Rex was never what?

Boring is the one thing she says life with him never was. Jeannette imagines him chuckling at the line, the way he did when he truly enjoyed something.

In The Glass Castle, which wind-bent desert plant does Rose Mary Walls say owes its beauty to its struggle?

A Joshua tree, bowed sideways by the wind, inspired dozens of her paintings. When Jeannette offered to straighten a sapling, she said that would destroy what made it special.

In The Glass Castle, in which state does Rose Mary Walls own inherited land valued at about a million dollars?

Texas land came down from her mother, and she would not sell it even while her children scavenged for food. Its value stunned Jeannette years later.

In The Glass Castle, what kills Rex Walls two weeks after he tells Jeannette that he is dying?

A heart attack killed him at fifty-nine, after decades of four packs of cigarettes a day. He had blamed his decline on a rare tropical disease.

In The Glass Castle, which form of federal aid does Rex Walls say was first handed out in Welch?

Food stamps in their modern form really did start in Welch: in 1961 a McDowell County family received the first $95 worth as reporters looked on.

In The Glass Castle, which famous test pilot does Jeannette Walls interview for her school newspaper?

Chuck Yeager was the one man her father admired above all others. Rex waited on the porch with pen and paper to coach her on questions the day before.

In The Glass Castle, what kind of old building do the Walls family move into in Battle Mountain, Nevada?

A railroad depot on the edge of town became home. Cable spools served as tables, and the children slept in refrigerator-sized cardboard boxes they refused to trade for beds.

In The Glass Castle, what is the sulfur spring called where Rex Walls throws Jeannette in until she swims?

The Hot Pot, a desert spring that locals said had no bottom, was his classroom. His lesson afterwards: you can't cling to the side your whole life.

In The Glass Castle, which Nevada neighbor fires a BB gun at the Walls house after Jeannette returns his ring?

Billy Deel, a delinquent three years her senior, got real bullets back when Lori fetched her father's pistol. The family left for Phoenix that same night.

In The Glass Castle, what kind of business is the Green Lantern, the house the Walls kids pass in Nevada?

A brothel, or a cathouse as their mother put it, the Green Lantern kept Christmas lights over its door all year. Jeannette saw no cats, only women waving from the porch.

In The Glass Castle, which item demanded by a school nurse does Rose Mary Walls dismiss as a crutch for Lori?

Eyeglasses let Lori read street signs aloud and spot starlings on the telephone wires for the first time. Moved to tears, she decided to become an artist.

In The Glass Castle, what do Jeannette and Brian Walls find under rotting lumber that their mother refuses to sell?

A diamond ring of two carats went straight onto her finger to replace the wedding band Rex had pawned. Self-esteem, she said, was even more vital than food.

In The Glass Castle, Rose Mary Walls says she stays married to Rex partly because she is what kind of addict?

Excitement was her self-diagnosed addiction. Her first reason for refusing to leave him, when Jeannette urged her to, was her Catholic faith.

In The Glass Castle, what do Jeannette and Brian Walls rig into a catapult to bury Ernie Goad's gang in rocks?

A mattress piled with stones and yanked by ropes looped over tree branches sent an avalanche onto the bullies' bikes. The siblings named it the Battle of Little Hobart Street.

In The Glass Castle, which Walls sibling stabs their mother and later leaves New York for California?

Maureen, the youngest, spent a year in an upstate hospital before buying a one-way bus ticket west. Jeannette blamed herself for failing to protect her.

In The Glass Castle, which nickname does Rex Walls use for his daughter Jeannette?

Mountain Goat was his name for her because she never fell when they climbed together. He uses it even on the night the two of them hunt a monster called Demon through the house.

In The Glass Castle, which relative in Welch snaps at Jeannette Walls for greeting her as Grandma?

Erma, Rex's mother, disliked the word because it made her sound old. She also banned laughing in her house and banged the floor with a broom handle when the children got loud.

In The Glass Castle, who burns down the Walls grandparents' house by falling asleep with a lit cigarette?

Uncle Stanley dozed off in the basement over his comic books, and the big clapboard house burned to the ground. He and Grandpa escaped and moved into a small apartment.

In The Glass Castle, which Welch bully befriends Jeannette Walls after seeing her rescue a small boy from a dog?

Dinitia Hewitt later takes her swimming in the morning, the free session when Welch's Black families used the town pool.

In The Glass Castle, Rex Walls names Jeannette after which teacher who talked him out of quitting school?

Miss Bivens taught him English at Welch High and, decades later, advised the student paper his daughter joined. Rose Mary added a second N to the name to make it look French.

In The Glass Castle, what is the name of the Welch High School newspaper Jeannette Walls ends up editing?

The Maroon Wave was typeset at the offices of The Welch Daily News, where Jeannette read stories coming off the wire machines and found her calling.

In The Glass Castle, what do Lori and Jeannette Walls name the piggy bank holding their New York escape fund?

Oz filled up for almost nine months with babysitting and poster money, until the girls found the pig slashed open and every dollar gone.

In The Glass Castle, what name does Rex Walls give the gold Cadillac Coupe DeVille he wins at poker?

Elvis had gold shag upholstery, air-conditioning and push-button windows. Jeannette thought the car should be sold to pay for an indoor toilet, yet she loved riding in it.

In The Glass Castle, whose clay bust does Lori Walls sculpt for a scholarship before her father ruins it?

William Shakespeare took her a week to model with a sharpened Popsicle stick. Rex, who called the playwright a fraud, smeared off the mouth with his thumb.

In The Glass Castle, what does Rex Walls press into Jeannette's hand at the Welch bus station as she leaves?

His favorite jackknife, horn-handled with a blade of blue German steel, had gone along on their old monster hunts. He said he would feel better knowing she had it.

In The Glass Castle, what does thirteen-year-old Jeannette Walls take from a Welch jewelry store's case, then put back?

A watch with four interchangeable bands tempted her after the owner refused her a sales commission. She slipped it back once she saw she could never wear it without being caught.

In The Glass Castle, which women's college does Jeannette Walls finish with help from her father's poker winnings?

Barnard College took grants, loans and a job answering phones on Wall Street to pay for. When she came up a thousand dollars short, Rex handed her $950.

On which wealthy Manhattan street is Jeannette Walls living when The Glass Castle opens?

Park Avenue was her first husband's address, and her mother said she had sold out by moving there. A year after her father died, she left both the man and the street.

At lunch in the opening of The Glass Castle, what does Rose Mary Walls say she could use when Jeannette offers help?

Electrolysis was her only request, on the grounds that a woman who looks good feels good. Her daughter, she added, was the one with confused values.

Before The Glass Castle made her a best-selling memoirist, what kind of column did Jeannette Walls write for MSNBC.com?

Gossip was her beat for two decades, at New York magazine, Esquire and then MSNBC.com, all while she hid her own family story from colleagues.

Which actress plays the adult Jeannette Walls in the film adaptation of The Glass Castle?

Brie Larson took the part after Jennifer Lawrence, attached to the project for years, left during a long search for a male lead.

Which director of the indie drama Short Term 12 went on to film Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle?

Destin Daniel Cretton also co-wrote the screenplay, and Marvel later hired him to direct Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Which later book by Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, tells the life of her grandmother Lily Casey Smith?

Half Broke Horses, which she billed as a true-life novel, was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Which poet's 'Poem on His Birthday' supplies the epigraph that opens Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle?

Dylan Thomas wrote the lines about a heaven that never was nor will be yet is always true, a fitting overture for a father's unbuilt dream house.

In The Glass Castle, who does Rex Walls say cured Lori's scorpion sting instead of hospital doctors?

A Navajo witch doctor cut open the wound, spread on a dark brown paste and chanted, in Rex's telling. He wished his burned younger daughter had been taken to the same healer.

Which actor plays the charming, unreliable Rex Walls in the film adaptation of The Glass Castle?

Woody Harrelson played him in a production that began shooting in Welch, West Virginia, the real town where the Walls family had lived.