Lyddie
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40 free Lyddie trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Lyddie is the story of a thirteen-year-old farm girl who refuses to let her family fall apart. Hired out as a servant to pay off what her family owes, she makes her way to the factory city of Lowell, where the wages are good, the looms are deafening and the air is thick with lint. This quiz follows the novel from its first page to its last. Plenty of questions cover chapters 1 to 6, on the farm and in Mistress Cutler's kitchen, and the rest move through the weaving room, the boardinghouse and the mill girls' fight for fairer treatment. A few look at the real mill girls of the 1840s and at the writer behind the book. It suits students reading Lyddie in class, teachers who want a quick check on the chapters, and anyone who remembers the book fondly. 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 01Which wild animal forces its way into the family cabin in the opening chapter of Lyddie?
A black bear
A black bear smells food cooking and pushes through the door, and Lyddie stares it down while her family climbs to the loft. From then on she thinks of each new trouble as another one to face.
Q 02In Lyddie, what does Lyddie's deeply religious mother take the animal's break-in to be a sign of?
The end of the world
The end of the world, Mama decides, is close, so she takes the two youngest girls to her sister's farm to wait for it. Tens of thousands of real Americans shared that fear in the 1840s.
Q 03In Lyddie, which word does Mama misspell in a letter, handing Lyddie and Charlie a private joke?
Hope
Hope comes out one letter short in Mama's letter, so it reads like a word for jumping. Charlie teases her spelling to cheer his sister up, and the slip becomes Lyddie's private motto.
Q 04In Lyddie, what kind of business does Mistress Cutler run, where Lyddie is hired out as a servant?
A tavern
A tavern is where Lyddie works from before dawn until late at night, in a kitchen bigger than her family's whole house. A well-dressed guest there first tells her about factory wages.
Q 05In Lyddie, the kindly neighbors who look after the empty farm belong to which religious group?
Quakers
Quakers taught that slavery was morally wrong, and many quietly sheltered people escaping it. Lyddie is wary of her neighbors' radical politics at first, then comes to depend on their kindness.
Q 06Lyddie leaves home to weave cloth in the textile mills of Lowell, a city in which state?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts was home to Lowell's mills, which by 1840 had recruited over 8,000 workers. Nearly three-quarters of them were women, many the daughters of New England farmers.
Q 07Which Charles Dickens novel does Betsy read aloud in Lyddie, making Lyddie long to read for herself?
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist grips Lyddie because its orphan hero also dreads the poorhouse. She later buys her own copy and fixes copied pages to her loom so she can practice reading as she works.
Q 08In Lyddie, Ezekial hides in the family's empty cabin on his way to freedom in which country?
Canada
Canada put Ezekial beyond the reach of the slave catchers in town. Lyddie hands him her savings for the journey, and he later writes from Montreal, enclosing fifty dollars to repay her.
Q 09Which writer, the author of Lyddie, later became National Ambassador for Young People's Literature?
Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson has said Lyddie surprised her by growing so grasping, a mirror of the mill owners' greed. She published the novel in 1991 and served as national ambassador in 2010 and 2011.
Q 10In Lyddie, the hill farm Lyddie works to save from debt lies in which state?
Vermont
Vermont is home, and the book's last chapter returns there in November 1846. It was also the first state to outlaw adult slavery, which made it a fairly safe stop for people fleeing north.
Q 11In the opening chapter of Lyddie, which food cooking over the fire lures a wild animal indoors?
Oatmeal
Oatmeal is bubbling over the fire when the intruder arrives and plunges its head into the pot. Scalded, with the pot's handle caught round its neck, it crashes back out through the door.
Q 12In Lyddie, which farm animal do Lyddie and Charlie sell to a neighbor before leaving home?
A calf
A calf fetches twenty-five dollars, far more than Lyddie expected, once the buyer learns the children spent the whole winter alone. She means to put the money toward the family debt.
Q 13In Lyddie, which cook at Cutler's befriends Lyddie and lends her money for the journey to Lowell?
Triphena
Q 21In Lyddie, which weaver teaches Lyddie to run a loom and is called a radical by her roommates?
Diana
Diana comes to the rescue on Lyddie's deafening first day, when she cannot hear a word the overseer says. The roommates warn that she recruits girls for the Female Labor Reform Association.
Q 22In Lyddie, which fictional Lowell mill company gives Lyddie a one-year contract as a weaver?
Concord Corporation
Concord Corporation is invented, though it is based on the real mill corporations of Lowell. Its Number 5 boardinghouse, where Lyddie sleeps in the attic at first, gives one chapter its title.
Q 23In Lyddie, which boardinghouse keeper, a coach driver's sister, helps Lyddie find work at the mill?
Mrs. Bedlow
Triphena, who never married and has no children of her own, grows fond of the hard-working girl. When Lyddie is dismissed she hands over five dollars and a new pair of boots for the road.
Q 14In the cook's fable in Lyddie, a frog trapped in a milk pail kicks until the milk becomes what?
Butter
Butter is what the stubborn frog churns the milk into, while a second frog falls asleep and drowns. The tale gives the chapter its title, and Lyddie sees herself in the frog that keeps kicking.
Q 15In Lyddie, which seasonal job needs every hand at Cutler's and gives the mistress goods to sell?
Maple sugaring
Maple sugaring keeps the whole staff busy boiling sap once the snowstorm passes. New Englanders had learned the craft from Native people, and their sugar cost less than cane sugar shipped from the Caribbean.
Q 16In Lyddie, which book did the runaway Ezekial teach himself to read?
The Bible
The Bible was the book Ezekial wanted to read for himself, and its stories and teachings convinced him he must seize his own freedom. Lyddie is struck by how polished his language and manners are.
Q 17What is the family name of Lyddie, her brother Charlie and her sisters Rachel and Agnes in Lyddie?
Worthen
Worthen is the name on a farm deep in debt. With her husband gone, Lyddie's mother lets the fields to a neighbor and hires out her two eldest children to help pay what is owed.
Q 18In Lyddie, which animals did Lyddie's father borrow money to raise just before prices collapsed?
Sheep
Sheep looked like a sure thing until the price of wool fell, leaving the family owing money on poor land. An earlier scheme to sell potash had failed him too.
Q 19In Lyddie, why does Mistress Cutler, back from a selling trip, dismiss Lyddie on the spot?
Going home without leave
Going home without leave costs Lyddie her place, even though the cook, left in charge, had said she could go. Lyddie makes up her mind at once to try life as a factory girl instead.
Q 20In Lyddie, where has Lyddie's father gone, leaving Mama and four children alone on the farm?
Out west
Out west is where he went to make money, and no word has come since. Lyddie and Charlie stay behind in the cabin so he will know where to find them, though Mama doubts he will ever return.
Mrs. Bedlow warns Lyddie that the mills will not hire her in her old clothes, then takes her to the mill herself to ask for a job. Later she agrees to let little Rachel stay for a while.
Q 24In Lyddie, which loom-room chore do the weavers call the kiss of death?
Sucking thread through a shuttle
Sucking thread through a shuttle drew fibers from the yarn straight into a weaver's lungs, and Lyddie has to do it many times a day. A fellow weaver shows her the trick when she first starts at the looms.
Q 25In Lyddie, what does the petition Lyddie hesitates to sign ask lawmakers to grant mill workers?
A ten-hour workday
A ten-hour workday was a bold demand when shifts ran from five in the morning until seven at night. Lyddie holds back because shorter days would mean less money for the family debt.
Q 26In Lyddie, which fiber do Lowell's looms weave, filling the air with lint that makes workers cough?
Cotton
Cotton lint hung in the closed weaving rooms, and breathing it gave some workers an incurable cough later known as brown lung. In the novel both Betsy and little Rachel fall ill with it.
Q 27In Lyddie, which newcomer does Lyddie train at the looms and later teach to read?
Brigid
Brigid slows Lyddie down at first and gets the sharp edge of her temper. Things change after Lyddie presses her pocket change on the girl to fetch a doctor for her sick mother.
Q 28In Lyddie's time, which disaster drove thousands of Irish families to mill towns such as Lowell?
A potato famine
A potato famine, known in Ireland as the Great Hunger, followed a disease that ruined the crop. Between a fifth and a quarter of the Irish either emigrated or died.
Q 29In Lyddie, which Sunday duty do the mill's rules require of every girl in the Lowell boardinghouses?
Attending church
Attending church was written into the regulations, partly to reassure parents who were sending daughters to the city. Lyddie rarely goes, and once reads a copied page of her novel during the sermon.
Q 30In Lyddie, which mill job, usually given to the youngest children, does little Rachel take?
Doffer
Doffer was the job of swapping full bobbins for empty ones on the spinning frames. Real doffers worked only about fifteen minutes in each hour and could play in a corner in between.