Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie
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40 free Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie has been a fixture of middle-school reading lists for two decades. Steven Alper is thirteen, obsessed with his drum kit and hopelessly stuck on a girl who barely notices him. Then his five-year-old brother Jeffrey falls seriously ill, and the year Steven had planned turns into something much harder, and much funnier, than a story about a sick child has any right to be. This quiz follows the book from its first chapter to its last: the Alper family at home and in hospital, the adults at school who work out what Steven is hiding, the jazz band and its spring concert, and the two girls of the title. A closing stretch covers Jordan Sonnenblick himself, the real-life spark for the story, the book's unlikely route into print and the sequel. Use it as a comprehension check after the last page, as revision before a reading test, or to see how much of the novel has stayed with you. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the whole set can be printed for a lesson or a book club.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the "dangerous pie" Steven's little brother stirs up in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?
Raw kitchen scraps and toy cars
Raw kitchen scraps and toy cars go into it: coffee grounds, eggs and their shells, cola, uncooked bacon and three Matchbox racers. The mess is only described in the first chapter.
Q 02In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which illness is five-year-old Jeffrey diagnosed with after a nosebleed?
Leukemia
Leukemia, in the form doctors call ALL, is behind a nosebleed that will not stop. Steven spends the day fearing trouble for letting Jeffrey fall, then hears the real news that night.
Q 03In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, how does Steven support Jeffrey after a new classmate points out he is bald?
Shaves his own head
Shaves his own head is Steven's answer, part of a new resolve to act on what he can change. By concert night his All-City bandmates have gone bald as well.
Q 04In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, Annette and Renee turn the spring jazz concert into a fundraiser for what?
The Alpers' medical bills
The Alpers' medical bills are the cause. The running total passes $21,000 by the intermission and ends above $23,000.
Q 05In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven give up at the benefit concert to stay with Jeffrey?
His big drum solo
His big drum solo goes unplayed: honoring a promise to stay by his brother, Steven leaves at the intermission of the night he had been preparing for all year.
Q 06In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven Alper quietly stop doing for months after Jeffrey's diagnosis?
His schoolwork
His schoolwork lapses for months until he is failing most classes. At the meeting he finally admits his brother has cancer, and he catches up over winter break.
Q 07In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, where at home does Steven retreat to practice drums for hours?
The basement
The basement is his refuge once the family's time and money go to his brother's treatment. A practice pad even comes along on a hospital trip.
Q 08Jordan Sonnenblick wrote Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie to help whom through a family crisis?
One of his students
One of his students, an eighth-grader named Emily, had a little brother in cancer treatment and rarely spoke about it. Finding no novel about a teen in her position, he wrote one.
Q 09By the last chapter of Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which term describes the state of Jeffrey's cancer?
Remission
Remission is where the story leaves him, though the sequel shows the lasting marks of treatment: a limp, shaky hands and trouble concentrating.
Q 10The story of Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie unfolds through which kind of writing by Steven Alper?
Journal entries
Journal entries written for English class carry the story. Miss Palma's rule keeps a folded-down page private, and Steven's notebook soon bristles with folded pages.
Q 11In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, a children's hospital in which city treats Jeffrey's cancer?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is where Jeffrey and his mother spend the first week after the diagnosis, leaving Steven at home with a father who barely speaks.
Q 12What job does Steven Alper's father bury himself in after Jeffrey's diagnosis in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?
Accountant
Accountant fits a man who copes by going quiet and fretting over money late at night; he even vetoes the benefit concert before coming round.
Q 13In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven offer Renee on the school bus to patch things up?
A piece of gum
Q 21In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what is Steven serving Jeffrey for breakfast when the boy falls off a stool?
Oatmeal
Oatmeal, or "moatmeal" in Jeffrey's five-year-old vocabulary, is on the table when he tumbles and his nose starts a bleed that refuses to stop.
Q 22How does drum teacher Mr. Stoll respond when Steven Alper tries to quit lessons to save his family money?
Waives his fee entirely
Mr. Stoll waives his fee entirely and keeps the lessons going. Giving them up was Steven's first attempt to act on what he could change rather than brood on what he could not.
Q 23What nickname do Steven Alper's high-school bandmates in the All-City Jazz Band give him as a junior member?
The Peasant
A piece of gum does it. When she asks whether he fears she will contaminate it, he explains that he had only been trying to protect his little brother.
Q 14On concert night in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, the emergency room traces Jeffrey's fever to what?
An ear infection
An ear infection is all it is. With chemotherapy flattening his immune system, though, even a slight fever means a dash to the hospital.
Q 15In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven leave with Samantha, a patient he meets at the hospital?
His drumsticks
His drumsticks come back to him in a package from a nurse on the day he learns that Samantha has died.
Q 16In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which relative does hospital patient Samantha say never visits her?
Her older sister
Her older sister has stayed away since the illness began, so Samantha makes Steven promise to stick by Jeffrey whatever happens.
Q 17Which sweet reward does school counselor Mrs. Galley hand Steven Alper for opening up about his troubles?
Candy hearts
Candy hearts are her payment for honesty, and her advice lasts longer: stop agonizing over what cannot be changed and work on what can.
Q 18In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what begins disturbing Steven's sleep during Jeffrey's treatment?
A recurring nightmare
A recurring nightmare, in which Jeffrey sinks into the ground during a game of catch, is what finally gets Steven talking to an adult about his fears.
Q 19In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which new rule for high-schoolers threatens to empty the All-City jazz band?
Community service
Community service, newly required every semester, would force many players to quit. Annette's fix is to turn the band's own concert into a good cause.
Q 20In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what stops pianist Annette from playing in the spring concert?
A broken arm
A broken arm takes her off the piano bench late in the winter, so she pours her energy into running the event with Renee instead.
The Peasant, often shortened to Pez, marks him as one of the youngest players in a band made up mostly of high-schoolers.
Q 24Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie opens with Steven Alper looking back on his year from which school event?
His graduation ceremony
His graduation ceremony frames the book: the story returns to it in the final pages, by which time Annette has become Steven's girlfriend.
Q 25Biff, the high-school boyfriend of Steven Alper's crush Renee, plays which instrument in the All-City Jazz Band?
Guitar
Guitar is Biff's instrument, and as a high school sophomore he puts Renee even further out of reach for an eighth-grade drummer.
Q 26In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what exactly is Matt Medic, Jeffrey's source of courage in hospital?
An action figure
An action figure is what Jeffrey reaches for when treatment gets frightening; the cheerful five-year-old channels his bravery through Matt Medic.
Q 27In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, gifted pianist Annette hopes to take classes at which elite music school?
Juilliard
Juilliard, in Manhattan, is her goal, and the sequel reports that she made it there for college while still dating Steven.
Q 28Which Jordan Sonnenblick novel continues the Alper family's story from Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?
After Ever After
After Ever After picks up the family years later. Sonnenblick wrote it after a social worker emailed to tell him the story was far from finished.
Q 29In the sequel to Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, college-age Steven takes off for which continent to play drums?
Africa
Africa is his destination: he leaves college for a year with a pair of bongos to join a drumming circle and find himself.
Q 30Which jazz trumpeter co-wrote "Manteca", one of the Latin jazz tunes name-checked in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie wrote it in 1947 with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller, and it became one of the founding tunes of Afro-Cuban jazz.