A Day No Pigs Would Die
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40 free A Day No Pigs Would Die trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Robert Newton Peck's 1972 novel helped define young adult fiction: a short, plain-spoken story of a twelve-year-old Vermont farm boy, the pig he raises, and the year he has to grow up. It is still taught in middle and high schools, and still argued over for how frankly it treats birth, slaughter and loss. This quiz follows the book from its opening scene in a pasture to its final chapter. Expect questions on Rob and his family, the people down the road, the Shaker rules the household lives by, the trip to the fair, and the hard choices of the winter. A handful cover the author himself and the arguments the novel has stirred up since. It is written for students checking what they remember before a test, teachers who want a quick review set, and anyone rereading a childhood favorite. Every question comes with a short explanation, so a miss still leaves you knowing more than before.
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Q 01What name does Rob Peck give the piglet he receives as a reward in A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Pinky
Pinky is the first thing Rob has ever owned, a gift from a grateful neighbor. She follows him everywhere, and he spends her first night in her new pen sleeping beside her.
Q 02In A Day No Pigs Would Die, what does Rob Peck tie around a calf's head to pull it free?
His pants
His pants become a birthing rope: Rob knots one leg to the calf and the other to a tree, so the cow pulls her own calf out as she bolts. She then bites his arm and drags him along behind her.
Q 03Which Vermont-born US president is in office during the events of A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch on the Fourth of July, and Rob's teacher tells her class that Vermonters should be proud of him. The story unfolds just before the Great Depression.
Q 04Which children's TV host, a college classmate of Robert Newton Peck, was an usher at his wedding?
Fred Rogers
Fred Rogers studied alongside Peck at Rollins College, years before Mister Rogers' Neighborhood reached television. Peck said the gentle host was also godfather to his two children.
Q 05In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck mistakes which Revolutionary War hero for a baseball player on a test?
Ethan Allen
Ethan Allen led the Green Mountain Boys, the militia that seized Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. Rob assumes they are a baseball team, one he is forbidden to watch on Sundays.
Q 06Where did Robert Newton Peck write A Day No Pigs Would Die while holding down a New York job?
On his commuter train
On his commuter train between Connecticut and New York, Peck drafted the whole book in about three weeks. It came out when he was 44 and became a best seller.
Q 07In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck's father says being unable to read or write bars him from what?
Voting
Voting is closed to Rob's father because he is illiterate. He claims not to resent it, yet tells Rob a man should be valued for his practical skills instead.
Q 08Why does Rob Peck's father decide the family's pet pig must be slaughtered in A Day No Pigs Would Die?
She is barren
She is barren, so she will never give the litters Rob dreamed of selling, and a poor family cannot feed a pig as a pet. Rob helps with the killing one December day, and weeps.
Q 09The title A Day No Pigs Would Die refers to the day of which event in Rob Peck's life?
His father's burial
His father's burial brings the farm's work to a halt, and the dead man earned his living slaughtering hogs. With the butcher gone, the animals are safe for one day.
Q 10In A Day No Pigs Would Die, what does Rob Peck do as a judge pins a ribbon on his pig?
He vomits
He vomits after catching a whiff of pig manure in the show ring. His neighbors clean him up, then point out what the blue ribbon is for: the best-behaved pig at the fair.
Q 11Which neighbor rewards Rob Peck with a piglet for saving his cow in A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Ben Tanner
Ben Tanner is the better farmer of the two, by the reckoning of Rob's father, who admires how well he keeps his land. The piglet is his thanks for the safe delivery of two bull calves.
Q 12What is the first name of Rob Peck's father, the stern hog butcher of A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Haven
Haven was also the middle name of the author's real father, Frank. The fictional farmer is nearly sixty and never shows his son physical affection, yet his love is plain.
Q 13In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck shows his pig at a fair held in which Vermont city?
Rutland
Q 21Which cow does Rob Peck help through a difficult birth at the start of A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Apron
Apron belongs to the farm next door, and Rob only comes upon her because he has walked out of school after a quarrel. Saving her and her calf costs him a week in bed.
Q 22After the calf is born in A Day No Pigs Would Die, what does Rob Peck pull from the choking cow's throat?
A goiter
A goiter is what Rob tears loose to let her breathe, and the cow clamps down on his arm in return. Back home he is laid on a table while his mother sews up the wound herself.
Q 23What is the name of the Peck family's ox, who does the hauling in A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Solomon
Solomon stands in for the horse the family lacks, pulling the wagon and dragging the pig's new shelter into place with a capstan. Rob hitches him up again on the morning his father dies.
Rutland dazzles Rob, who has never seen such crowds and fears he will miss something if he blinks. He rides there in a neighbor's horse-drawn wagon, because his own family keeps no horse.
Q 14In A Day No Pigs Would Die, which animal is shut in a barrel to fight Ira Long's terrier?
A weasel
A weasel caught raiding the hen coop is the terrier's opponent, in a custom meant to make the dog hate the hen-killers. The dog wins but is so badly hurt that it has to be put down.
Q 15Where does Rob Peck find his father dead one May morning in A Day No Pigs Would Die?
In the barn
In the barn, on a bed of straw, Rob's father has died in his sleep. The boy quietly finishes the morning chores before he breaks the news to the women of the house.
Q 16Which hard task does thirteen-year-old Rob Peck do himself on the day of his father's funeral?
Digging the grave
Digging the grave in the family plot falls to Rob, who is now the man of the house. That evening he walks back out to the orchard alone to wish his father goodnight.
Q 17In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck finds a paper on which his illiterate father practiced writing what?
His own name
His own name fills a scrap of paper that Rob finds in an old cigar box, and one attempt is almost perfect. It suggests the proud farmer minded his illiteracy more than he ever let on.
Q 18In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck's report card is all A's apart from a D in which subject?
English
English earns Rob a D, which horrifies a visiting cousin who used to teach it. She appoints herself his tutor on the spot and draws him a sentence diagram there and then.
Q 19In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck is startled to find that his kindest neighbors belong to which church?
Baptist
Baptist worship was something Rob had been taught to dread, thanks to a schoolmate's mother and her lurid account of dunkings. Hearing the truth from a man he loves, he bursts out laughing.
Q 20Before A Day No Pigs Would Die became a bestseller, Robert Newton Peck worked in which New York trade?
Advertising
Advertising kept Peck busy for two decades, until the success of his first novels let him quit in 1974. Before that he had tried a saw mill, a lumber camp, a paper mill and law school.
Q 24Which relative, the eldest sister of Rob Peck's mother, lives with the family in A Day No Pigs Would Die?
Aunt Carrie
Aunt Carrie is nearly seventy and, like Rob's parents, cannot read or write. She is easily scandalized, above all by a widow down the road who seems to be living with her hired man.
Q 25The Peck family farm in A Day No Pigs Would Die lies just outside which small Vermont town?
Learning
Learning has the church, the churchyard and the undertaker, and so many of its people attend the funeral of Rob's father that their respect for him is plain. The story begins there one April in the mid-1920s.
Q 26What does schoolmate Edward Thatcher mock, driving Rob Peck out of class as A Day No Pigs Would Die opens?
His clothes
His clothes are old and sewn at home by his mother, and the taunts keep Rob from going back in after recess. The same boy also sneers at the family's Shaker ways.
Q 27In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck longs for which store-bought item that his friend Jacob Henry owns?
A coat
A coat from a shop is the one luxury Rob admits to wanting; he has schooled himself not to ask for a bicycle. His father's view is that Shakers have no use for frills.
Q 28Which sequel to A Day No Pigs Would Die follows Rob Peck as he quits school to save the farm?
A Part of the Sky
A Part of the Sky arrived in 1994, 22 years after the original. It picks up where the first book stops, with thirteen-year-old Rob looking for work to pay for the farm.
Q 29Which Robert Newton Peck series about a Vermont boy's scheming best friend was adapted for television?
Soup
Soup is the nickname of Luther, a well-meaning schemer whose plans keep landing the narrator in trouble. The books began in 1974, and two of them became ABC Weekend Specials.
Q 30Critics doubt the Pecks of A Day No Pigs Would Die are real Shakers, since the sect required what?
Celibacy
Celibacy was the rule in Shaker villages, where men and women lived apart and all property was held in common. A married farmer raising children on land he hopes to own fits none of it.