Dash by Kirby Larson
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40 free Dash by Kirby Larson trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Kirby Larson's Dash is a middle-grade novel about a Japanese American girl, Mitsi Kashino, whose family is forced from home after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The camps do not allow pets, so Mitsi has to leave her dog behind, and letters written in his voice become her lifeline. The story draws on real events, which is part of why it is read so widely in classrooms. This quiz covers the whole book: Mitsi's family and classmates, the neighbor who steps in, daily life behind barbed wire, and how the story ends. It also asks about the history around the novel and the real people who inspired it. It suits students checking their reading, teachers and librarians building a classroom or book-club review, and anyone who finished the novel and wants to see how much stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Kirby Larson's Dash, which elderly neighbor takes in Mitsi's dog when the Kashinos are sent away?
Mrs. Bowker
Mrs. Bowker first meets Mitsi by rescuing her from bullies, and she agrees to foster Dash once the family learns the camps forbid animals.
Q 02In Dash, what ironic nickname belongs to the fairgrounds site where the Kashino family is first held?
Camp Harmony
Camp Harmony was a temporary assembly center where each barracks room had one small window, a single electrical socket and a wood stove.
Q 03After their stay at the fairgrounds in Dash, the Kashino family is moved to which permanent camp?
Minidoka
Minidoka held more than 13,000 Japanese Americans during the war, and most families from the fairgrounds reached it after a 30-hour train trip.
Q 04Which two best friends snub Mitsi Kashino at school after Pearl Harbor in Kirby Larson's Dash?
Mags and Judy
Mags and Judy let a taunting classmate come between them and Mitsi, which leaves Dash as her one steadfast ally.
Q 05Kirby Larson's Dash follows the Kashinos from Washington to a high-desert camp in which other state?
Idaho
Idaho held the family's second camp on the remote Snake River Plain, a dusty journey from the fairgrounds where they were first confined.
Q 06How does Kirby Larson's Dash end for Mitsi Kashino and the dog she had to leave behind?
They are reunited
They are reunited by the final pages; the judges who honored the book wrote that any other ending would be a disservice to its readers.
Q 07Before the camps, Mitsi Kashino and her family live in which West Coast city in Dash?
Seattle
Seattle is the Kashinos' home, and it is also where the author grew up without hearing about the incarceration until she reached college.
Q 08In Dash, what does a stranger grab to drive off the boys bullying Mitsi Kashino on her walk home?
A broom
A broom is the weapon of the woman who later fosters Dash; a grateful Mitsi thanks her with a drawing, and the two become fast friends.
Q 09In Dash, Mitsi's grandmother keeps repeating the Japanese phrase Shikata ga nai, which means what?
It cannot be helped
It cannot be helped is the saying Mitsi grows tired of hearing while the family packs; the memoir Farewell to Manzanar devotes a whole chapter to the idea.
Q 10Kirby Larson based Dash on a real family's wartime pet, a dog with which name?
Chubby
Chubby had to stay behind when his owner was incarcerated in 1942, and her written request to the Army to bring him along was denied.
Q 11In Dash, which bubbly girl becomes Mitsi Kashino's close friend inside the fairgrounds camp?
Debbie
Debbie is cheerful but suffers mysterious low spells, and the publisher's guide sets her loyalty against the classmates who dropped Mitsi.
Q 12Kirby Larson's Dash won which 2015 prize given to historical fiction for young readers?
Scott O'Dell Award
The Scott O'Dell Award judges praised how the book kept the pleasures of a school, family and dog story while honestly showing wartime prejudice.
Q 13Dash is a companion to which earlier novel about a boy who loans his pet to the wartime Army?
Duke
Duke follows eleven-year-old Hobie Hanson, who donates his dog to the Dogs for Defense program and regrets it almost at once.
Q 21In Dash, Mitsi's rescuer regrets her World War I silence when friends of which heritage were run out of town?
German
German families were hounded out amid the hysteria of that war, and standing by Mitsi is the older woman's way of atoning.
Q 22In Dash, Mitsi Kashino thanks the woman who chased off the bullies with a drawing of what?
Her garden
Her garden is the subject, and the gift turns a frightening afternoon into a fast friendship between the girl and the older woman.
Q 23In Dash, what keepsake of Mitsi and her dog arrives by mail and gets shown all around camp?
A photograph
A photograph taken on the last day before the family left home overjoys Mitsi, and showing it off helps her talk to people in camp.
Q 14Mitsi Kashino is in which school grade when Kirby Larson's Dash opens in early 1942?
Fifth
Fifth grade turns hostile for the eleven-year-old, who meets nasty notes and racial slurs from her own classmates.
Q 15In Dash, which treasured possession does Mitsi Kashino give away to her closest friend in camp?
Her locket
Her locket goes to the girl she befriends behind the fence, a bond unlike the school friendships that crumbled after Pearl Harbor.
Q 16Which Japanese word does Mitsi Kashino use for her grandmother throughout Kirby Larson's Dash?
Obaachan
Obaachan must be fingerprinted after Pearl Harbor, one of the first signs of how the war reaches into the Kashino home.
Q 17In Dash, which brother worries Mitsi Kashino by going along with a group of boys in camp?
Ted
Ted drifts toward the other camp boys, one sign of how crowded quarters and endless lines begin to unravel the close Kashino family.
Q 18In Dash, which classmate comes between Mitsi Kashino and her two oldest friends after Pearl Harbor?
Patty
Patty hurls a racial slur at Mitsi, and the scapegoating at school is only the first hardship the Kashino family meets in 1942.
Q 19The first camp in Kirby Larson's Dash was a real one built on the fairgrounds of which Washington town?
Puyallup
Puyallup nearly doubled in population when about 7,390 people were confined there, some in an area that took in the racetrack and grandstand.
Q 20In Dash, the elderly neighbor who fosters Mitsi's dog says she used to live in which state?
Montana
Montana is where she watched a family of friends get run out of town during the First World War, a silence she has regretted ever since.
Q 24In Dash, repeated trips to which camp building help Mitsi Kashino get over her shyness with strangers?
The post office
The post office is where the letters signed by Dash arrive, so Mitsi keeps going back and slowly opens up to the people she meets.
Q 25Kirby Larson's Dash opens as Mitsi Kashino heads back to school after which holiday break?
Christmas vacation
Christmas vacation ends only weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Mitsi's hope that school will feel normal again is quickly dashed.
Q 26Which real-life camp artist appears as a character in Kirby Larson's novel Dash?
Eddie Sato
Eddie Sato is the kind of real historical figure that led Kirkus, in a starred review, to call the novel educational as well as heartwarming.
Q 27In Dash, the boys who chase Mitsi Kashino kick a pile of schoolbooks and which new possession into the mud?
A sketch pad
A sketch pad matters because art is Mitsi's gift, and behind the fence it becomes one of the ways she copes with camp life.
Q 28In Dash, what happens to Mitsi Kashino's father in the weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor?
He loses his job
He loses his job as suspicion falls on Japanese Americans, and soon the family must give up their home and most of what they own.
Q 29Which publisher released Kirby Larson's Dash in 2014 and later asked her for more wartime dog novels?
Scholastic Press
Scholastic Press saw such a warm response to the author's first two dog stories that it asked her to write two more.
Q 30Kirby Larson, author of Dash, earned a Newbery Honor in 2007 for which homesteading novel?
Hattie Big Sky
Hattie Big Sky follows a sixteen-year-old orphan, tired of being shuttled between relatives, who inherits her uncle's land and goes to work it.