Nightjohn
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40 free Nightjohn trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn is a short novel that hits hard. Told by Sarny, a twelve-year-old girl enslaved on the Waller plantation, it follows what happens when a new arrival offers to teach her letters, a skill the law forbids her to have. It is often read in schools, and the 1996 film adaptation is frequently shown alongside it. This quiz covers the whole story: the plot from John's arrival to the hidden school, the characters and what becomes of them, the film and its cast, and Paulsen's own life and other books. Questions about the film say so, because it changes several events from the novel. It is built for students checking their reading or viewing, for teachers who want a quick review, and for anyone who remembers the book and wants to see how much has stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Nightjohn, what does the newly arrived John ask for in exchange for teaching Sarny the alphabet?
Tobacco
Tobacco is his price for the first lesson. Sarny has some only because she uses shredded leaf to keep bugs off the flower beds.
Q 02Why is John, the man who escaped and came back, given the name Nightjohn in Gary Paulsen's novel?
He teaches at night
He teaches at night, tracing shapes in the dirt while the rest of the quarters sleep. Daylight belongs to the fields, and being caught with a lesson brings brutal punishment.
Q 03In Gary Paulsen's novel Nightjohn, what does Waller do to John for teaching Sarny to write?
Cuts off two toes
Cuts off two toes, one from each foot, with a hammer and chisel in front of the other workers. Three days later John runs anyway, in shoes he has made himself.
Q 04Which cable network premiered the film version of Nightjohn in June 1996 as one of its Premiere Films?
Disney Channel
Disney Channel aired it on June 1, 1996, and the film does not look away: a whipping and a maiming both happen in the story.
Q 05In Nightjohn, which word does Sarny proudly scratch in the dirt, leading Waller to catch her writing?
BAG
BAG is the first word she ever makes, built from the seven letters John has taught her so far. One careless moment with it brings punishment down on the two adults she trusts.
Q 06Which wilderness survival novel about Brian Robeson was written by Nightjohn author Gary Paulsen?
Hatchet
Hatchet, published in 1987, strands a thirteen-year-old alone in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash. It became the best known of Paulsen's 200-plus books.
Q 07Classroom guides pair Nightjohn with the 1845 Narrative of which man who escaped slavery?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass also treated reading as the road out of bondage. His mistress began teaching him to read until her husband put a stop to it.
Q 08What does Gary Paulsen say about the events of Nightjohn in the note that opens the novel?
They really happened
They really happened, he writes, with only times, names and places changed. Paulsen drew on the recorded accounts of people who had been enslaved.
Q 09In the novel Nightjohn, how is John brought onto the Waller plantation when Sarny first sees him?
With a rope around his neck
With a rope around his neck that runs up to Waller's saddle, and wearing no clothes. Sarny sees old whip scars across his back and wonders why Waller would buy a man who had plainly caused trouble.
Q 10In the film Nightjohn, which book does Sarny steal and secretly learn to read?
A Bible
A Bible that the master's son was meant to look after goes missing, and reading it convinces Sarny she has been lied to about whose side God is on.
Q 11In Nightjohn, how does Mammy first react when she catches John teaching Sarny a letter?
She knocks him down
She knocks him down, afraid of what the lessons could cost the girl. Hearing that he reached the free North and came back to teach is what changes her mind.
Q 12In Nightjohn, how does Waller punish Mammy when Sarny will not say who taught her letters?
Makes her pull his buggy
Makes her pull his buggy in a horse harness, whipping her to go faster, while the field hands are made to watch. The sight is what drives John to confess.
Q 13In Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn, where does Mammy speak her forbidden prayers so that no one can hear?
Q 21In Nightjohn, what mixture does John use to throw Waller's dogs off his trail when he runs?
Lard and pepper
Lard and pepper spoil his scent, and the trick works: Waller comes back two days later with nothing to show for the chase.
Q 22In Nightjohn, to the wall of which plantation building does Waller chain the people he means to whip?
Spring house
The spring house wall is where he leaves them shackled until the field hands come in, because he wants every punishment to have an audience.
Q 23In Nightjohn, what is the given name of the old woman Sarny calls Mammy?
Delie
Delie raises every child in the quarters, because birth mothers are sent straight back to the fields. In the sequel Sarny gives the same name to her own daughter.
Into an iron kettle
Into an iron kettle, a large cast-iron one that swallows her voice. Prayer is banned on the plantation, and what she asks for is freedom, a word Sarny does not yet understand.
Q 14In Nightjohn, how does Mammy keep track of the age of each child she raises?
Notches cut in a stick
Notches cut in a stick, one for every year that passes. Sarny's has twelve, though she cannot count them herself because numbers are forbidden to her as well.
Q 15In Nightjohn, what does Sarny find that Mammy tells her to hide because the enslaved may not own one?
A penny
A penny is all Sarny knows of money. When she overhears that the new field hand cost a thousand dollars, she can tell only that it is more than her coin.
Q 16According to plantation rumor in Nightjohn, by what means did Sarny bring John to the Waller place?
Witchcraft
Witchcraft was the whisper, fed by the fact that Sarny was born backward and keeps to herself. She insists she has no such power and simply watches and listens.
Q 17Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn takes place on a Southern plantation in the decade before which war?
American Civil War
The American Civil War was still a few years off: the story unfolds in the 1850s, and Paulsen never says which Southern state the plantation is in.
Q 18In Gary Paulsen's novel Nightjohn, what printed item does John hold up for the learners at his secret school?
A catalog
A catalog full of fine goods makes Sarny cry, and then she spots a printed word she already knows how to write.
Q 19In Nightjohn, where does John hold the hidden school that he leads Sarny to at the novel's end?
A brush-covered pit
A brush-covered pit in the woods hides the glow of three torches. Seven learners from other plantations are already there when Sarny arrives.
Q 20In which season does John return for Sarny in Nightjohn, months after escaping from the Waller plantation?
Winter
Winter has set in before he reappears in the quarters. He had promised to return, and Sarny had taken the promise for a comforting lie.
Q 24In Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn, which field worker is whipped for wandering near the big house and later tries to run?
Alice
Alice runs a few nights after John arrives, and Waller's dogs bring her down. Mammy stitches her wounds and she lives, though she never recovers her spirit.
Q 25In Nightjohn, what reason does John give Mammy for why the enslaved must read and write?
To record what was done
To record what was done to them, so that it is set down in writing. Mammy goes quiet at that, and the lessons carry on with her blessing.
Q 26Gary Paulsen dedicated Nightjohn to which woman, enslaved at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello?
Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings was the subject Paulsen was researching when he came across accounts of people violently punished for learning to read, and those accounts became this novel.
Q 27In Gary Paulsen's sequel to Nightjohn, to which city does the freed Sarny travel in search of her two children?
New Orleans
New Orleans is where she finds them, because she can read the auction papers that lead her to them. She goes on to start a school and tells the story at the age of 94.
Q 28Nightjohn author Gary Paulsen grew up and finished high school at Thief River Falls in which state?
Minnesota
Minnesota shaped his survival stories: as a boy there he largely fended for himself, working odd jobs and hunting deer with a bow and arrows he had made.
Q 29Which Alaskan sled dog race did Nightjohn author Gary Paulsen enter in 1983, finishing in about seventeen days?
Iditarod
The Iditarod covers roughly 1,150 miles, and he placed 41st of 54 finishers. Heart disease made him give up his dog team in 1990, which he called the hardest decision of his life.
Q 30Three novels by Nightjohn author Gary Paulsen were runners-up for which children's book prize, though none won?
Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal never came, though Dogsong and two later novels were named Honor Books. In 1997 the American Library Association gave him its lifetime award for teen writing.