Buffalo Before Breakfast
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40 free Buffalo Before Breakfast trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Buffalo Before Breakfast is the Magic Tree House adventure that drops Jack, Annie and a small scruffy dog named Teddy onto the Great Plains long before settlers arrived. In under a hundred pages they make a friend, learn how a Lakota camp lives and moves, and get caught in a stampede that only quick thinking and a little magic can stop. This quiz follows the story from the note in the tree house to the gift that ends the mission: who the children meet, what they wear and ride, what goes wrong at the herd and how it is put right. It also covers the real history the book teaches, from how the Lakota lived with the buffalo to what became of the great herds, plus a few questions on the series and the people who make it. It is written for young readers who have just finished the book, and for the parents and teachers reading along. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Buffalo Before Breakfast, what small accident by the Lakota boy sets off the buffalo stampede?
A sneeze
A sneeze is all it takes: the nearest buffalo jerks up its head and rushes at him, and the panic ripples through the whole herd.
Q 02Which gift from the Lakota boy's grandmother completes Jack and Annie's mission in Buffalo Before Breakfast?
An eagle feather
An eagle feather solves the riddle: the bird rules the wide blue sky over the plains, and the grandmother presents it to honor what the children did at the herd.
Q 03In Buffalo Before Breakfast, which young Lakota warrior takes Jack and Annie to meet his grandmother?
Black Hawk
Black Hawk looks like a grown warrior on horseback until he comes close: he is a boy of about ten or eleven on a pony.
Q 04In the eighteenth Magic Tree House book, which Lakota spirit helps Annie calm the stampeding herd?
White Buffalo Woman
White Buffalo Woman appears beside Annie, raises her hands and vanishes once the herd is calm; in Lakota tradition she is a sacred messenger.
Q 05As Jack reads in Buffalo Before Breakfast, the American buffalo is more correctly known by which name?
Bison
Bison is the accurate name: the word buffalo properly belongs to the water buffalo of Asia and the African buffalo, and early European explorers borrowed it for the American animal.
Q 06In Buffalo Before Breakfast, the Lakota boy hunts in the skin of which animal to feel its strength?
A wolf
A wolf, the boy explains, is the buffalo's most powerful hunter; he gives Jack and Annie a fright by walking out of his home inside the hide.
Q 07Which Lakota name does the grandmother give Jack at the campfire in Buffalo Before Breakfast?
Rides-Like-Wind
Rides-Like-Wind is Jack's new name, and Annie becomes Buffalo Girl; the grandmother then welcomes both children into her family.
Q 08Which author created Jack and Annie and wrote Buffalo Before Breakfast in the Magic Tree House series?
Mary Pope Osborne
Mary Pope Osborne had wanted for several years to send Jack and Annie to visit Native American people of the 1800s before she settled on the Lakota.
Q 09Which hide-covered homes do the Lakota of Buffalo Before Breakfast take down to follow the herds?
Tepees
Tepees kept the Lakota on the move: the cover and its long poles came down quickly, and the word itself comes from the Lakota language.
Q 10Jack and Annie of Buffalo Before Breakfast set out from the fictional town of Frog Creek in which US state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is where every trip ends: Jack points to a picture of Frog Creek in a book about the state and wishes to go home.
Q 11Why does the grandmother in Buffalo Before Breakfast tell her grandson to show the herd but not hunt?
The camp has enough meat
The camp has enough meat for the day, and she adds a rule the children admire: the Lakota never take more buffalo than they need.
Q 12How do Jack and Annie have to ride the ponies that carry them to the herd in Buffalo Before Breakfast?
Bareback
Bareback riding here means no saddle, and the ponies have no reins either: Annie tells Jack to hold the mane and grip with his legs, and she names the two ponies Midnight and Sunlight.
Q 13In Buffalo Before Breakfast, the tree house's magic turns Jack and Annie's clothes into which material?
Buckskin
Q 21Once all four gifts are collected, Teddy, the enchanted dog of Buffalo Before Breakfast, changes into what?
A young boy
A young boy stands where the dog was: Teddy had been a helper at Camelot who grew too curious and turned himself into a dog while reading a spell book.
Q 22Which enchantress of Camelot owns the tree house and leaves the note about Teddy in Buffalo Before Breakfast?
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay is one of King Arthur's siblings in most versions of the legend, and in these books she is a magical librarian who signs the note with her first name.
Q 23Which illustrator drew Buffalo Before Breakfast and the other original Magic Tree House books?
Sal Murdocca
Buckskin is soft leather usually made from deer hide; Jack gets a shirt and trousers, Annie a fringed dress, and both wear soft boots and coonskin caps.
Q 14Where do Jack and Annie hide when they first spot the Lakota camp in Buffalo Before Breakfast?
In the tall grass
In the tall grass, which grows as high as Jack's chest, the pair crouch out of sight until Teddy's barking gives them away to a passing rider.
Q 15Which quality, prized by the Lakota, does Jack summon to climb onto a pony in Buffalo Before Breakfast?
Courage
Courage does not come easily to cautious Jack, but he has read that the Lakota admire people who show no fear, so he lets out a whoop and holds on.
Q 16When the stampede traps the Lakota boy in Buffalo Before Breakfast, what does Jack do on his pony?
Charges in to save him
Jack charges in to save him: the golden pony weaves between the running buffalo, the boy throws himself across its back and they race up the slope.
Q 17Which gift for Teddy have Jack and Annie already collected when Buffalo Before Breakfast begins?
A pocket watch
A pocket watch, its hands stopped at 2:20, sits beside the note in the tree house; a girl called Lucy gave it to the children as thanks for their help.
Q 18Which book, the first of Teddy's four-gift quest, comes straight before Buffalo Before Breakfast?
Tonight on the Titanic
Tonight on the Titanic came out in March 1999, two months before this book, and is where the enchanted dog first turns up to lead the children.
Q 19After Buffalo Before Breakfast, Jack and Annie search for Teddy's third gift in the forests of which country?
India
India is the faraway forest of the riddle: in the next book a hermit gives the children a lotus flower after they free a tiger from a trap.
Q 20Two books after Buffalo Before Breakfast, the last of Teddy's gifts comes from which Australian animal?
A kangaroo
A kangaroo mother hands over a piece of painted bark in Dingoes at Dinnertime, thanking Jack and Annie for protecting her joey from a wildfire.
Sal Murdocca has illustrated more than 200 children's books, and away from the drawing board he writes the words for children's operas.
Q 24Which book launched the Magic Tree House series in 1992, seventeen titles ahead of Jack and Annie's Lakota adventure?
Dinosaurs Before Dark
Dinosaurs Before Dark sent Jack and Annie back to the late Cretaceous, where a Pteranodon saved them from a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Q 25The Lakota people of Buffalo Before Breakfast belong to which larger group of Great Plains nations?
The Sioux
The Sioux are made up of three related peoples, and the Lakota, also known as the Teton, became the great horse-riding buffalo hunters of the northern plains.
Q 26The Great Plains of Buffalo Before Breakfast stretch east from the foot of which mountain range?
The Rockies
The Rockies mark the western edge of the plains, which take in most of Kansas and Nebraska and the eastern parts of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming.
Q 27Which American park sheltered the last wild herd of buffalo, the animals of Buffalo Before Breakfast?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone is the only place in the United States where wild buffalo were never wiped out, and its herd is the country's oldest public one.
Q 28In Buffalo Before Breakfast the Lakota load their homes onto pole frames dragged by horses, called what?
A travois
A travois is two long poles lashed into an A shape with a platform between them; before horses came to the plains, smaller ones were pulled by dogs.
Q 29The coonskin caps Jack and Annie wear in Buffalo Before Breakfast are tied to which American frontiersman?
Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett became the face of the cap through Disney television episodes in 1954 and 1955, which made it hugely popular with boys in the 1950s.
Q 30In Buffalo Before Breakfast, the Lakota send prayers skyward on the smoke of which sacred object?
A pipe
A pipe, known in Lakota as the chanunpa, is held up and offered to each of the four directions before it passes around the circle at the evening fire.