The People Could Fly
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40 free The People Could Fly trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly is one of the most widely taught folktales in American classrooms. First published in 1985 as the title story of her collection of American Black folktales, it tells of enslaved people who find a way to rise above the fields and leave bondage behind, and of those who stay and remember. This quiz covers the story itself, from its characters to its ending, along with the other tales in the collection, the artists Leo and Diane Dillon, Hamilton's life and honors, and the older legend of the flying Africans that the story grows from. It suits students reviewing the story for class, teachers looking for discussion starters, and anyone who loves folklore. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The People Could Fly, what did the people shed before they were packed onto slave ships?
Their wings
Their wings had to go because the slave ships were packed too tightly to carry them. The 2004 picture book echoes the loss with black feathers scattered across its endpapers.
Q 02Which deep-voiced actor read twelve of the folktales for an audiobook of The People Could Fly?
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, recorded twelve of the tales for an audio edition published by Knopf.
Q 03In the Tar Baby story, also retold in The People Could Fly, where does the rabbit beg not to be thrown?
The briar patch
The briar patch is exactly where the rabbit wants to go: a thorny thicket is home to him, so he escapes. The phrase became an idiom for pretending to dread what you secretly want.
Q 04Which novelist built Song of Solomon on the flying Africans legend retold in The People Could Fly?
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison ends the novel with her hero Milkman leaping into the air, after he learns that his ancestor flew home to Africa. She insisted the legend was a real folk belief, not just a metaphor.
Q 05Which abolitionist dreamed as a girl of flying like a bird, echoing the legend told in The People Could Fly?
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman had the dreams in her youth, long before she led others to freedom. The flying Africans legend itself has been compared to the old metaphor of a caged bird.
Q 06Before The People Could Fly, the Dillons illustrated a famous West African tale about which buzzing insects?
Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes buzz in people's ears, the tale says, to ask whether everyone is still angry about a lie that set off a panic among the animals. The book won the Dillons a top illustration prize.
Q 07In The People Could Fly, what is the name of the old man who helps Sarah and others rise into the air?
Toby
Toby is the last to rise, and he goes sadly, because some of the people cannot fly and must stay behind, hoping to escape on foot one day.
Q 08Which New York museum named an Afrofuturist period room after Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly?
The Met
The Met opened Before Yesterday We Could Fly in 2021, co-curated by Oscar-winning production designer Hannah Beachler. Its title comes from the flying Africans legend as Hamilton told it.
Q 09Which fairy tale did Virginia Hamilton, author of The People Could Fly, retell as The Girl Who Spun Gold?
Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin becomes Lit'mahn in this West Indian version, a tiny creature with a wooden leg and a long tail who gives Big King's bride Quashiba three nights to guess his name.
Q 10Leo and Diane Dillon, who illustrated The People Could Fly as a team, were related in which way?
Husband and wife
Husband and wife since 1957, the Dillons met as rival art students and said their joint work came from a third artist, one neither of them could be alone.
Q 11In The People Could Fly, which crop are Sarah and the other enslaved workers forced to tend in the fields?
Cotton
Cotton is the crop, and the tale's field workers are worn down by sorrow and starvation until they can bear no more.
Q 12In The People Could Fly, what is strapped to Sarah's back while she labors in the fields?
Her baby
Her baby stays on her back in the 2004 picture book's paintings, which give more room to Sarah's bond with the old man who saves her.
Q 13In The People Could Fly, what does the old man use to lift Sarah off the ground and into the air?
Magic words
Magic words brought from Africa send Sarah up and away. He then speaks them for other workers across the field, and they rise too.
Q 21In which state did The People Could Fly author Virginia Hamilton grow up on a farm in Yellow Springs?
Ohio
Ohio stayed home: in 1969 she and her husband built their dream house on the last acres of her family's old farm and settled in to write.
Q 22By what means was Levi Perry, grandfather of author Virginia Hamilton, carried out of slavery as an infant?
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad brought him north in the late 1850s. His family farmed the same land for generations, and Hamilton later built her own home on it.
Q 23In 1995, Virginia Hamilton became the first children's writer to receive which honor?
MacArthur Fellowship
Q 14In The People Could Fly, what cruelty to Sarah finally drives the old man to help her escape?
A whipping
A whipping in the fields is the last straw. In the picture book the Dillons paint the enslaved people graceful and softly luminous, and the slave owners stiff and pinched.
Q 15At the end of The People Could Fly, what do the people left behind on the plantation go on to do?
Keep telling the tale
Keep telling the tale is all they can do: unable to fly, they hold on to freedom in their imaginations, telling and retelling the story of those who got away.
Q 16Bruh Rabbit, star of the animal tales in The People Could Fly, is which classic folklore character type?
The trickster
The trickster wins by wits rather than strength, and for enslaved storytellers a small rabbit beating powerful animals stood for their own hopes of besting their masters.
Q 17The illustrators of The People Could Fly were the first artists to win which prize two years running?
Caldecott Medal
Caldecott Medal wins came in 1976 and 1977, both for books about Africa, and Leo Dillon was the first Black artist ever to receive the honor.
Q 18Which famous spiritual is often compared to the legend in The People Could Fly for its imagery of flight?
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot shares the hope of being lifted out of bondage and carried home. Other spirituals in the same vein include Now Let Me Fly.
Q 19The flying Africans legend retold in The People Could Fly is most noted in which coastal Southern culture?
Gullah
Gullah storytellers of the Sea Islands kept the legend alive, sometimes saying the people turned into birds, even buzzards, before heading home across the ocean.
Q 20Which Virginia Hamilton novel made her the first Black writer to win the Newbery Medal?
M. C. Higgins, the Great
M. C. Higgins, the Great follows a boy whose mountain home is threatened by a mining company. It was the first book to win the Newbery, the National Book Award and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award.
MacArthur Fellowship honors came in 1995, a banner year in which she also received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for her lifetime contribution to American children's books.
Q 24Which honor for African American authors did The People Could Fly win the year after it was published?
Coretta Scott King Award
Coretta Scott King Award judges gave Hamilton the author prize in 1986 and named the Dillons' art an honor book. The 2004 picture book earned the illustrators a second honor.
Q 25How does the art in The People Could Fly: The Picture Book differ from the illustrations in the 1985 collection?
It is in full color
It is in full color, where the 1985 collection's forty paintings were printed in black and white. The picture book came out two years after Hamilton's death, and reviewers called it a tribute to her.
Q 26In The People Could Fly: The Picture Book, what are the people doing as crowds of them rise into the sky?
Linking hands
Linking hands, seemingly hundreds of people climb into the sky in one of the Dillons' most striking paintings, while the old man who freed them stays below until last.
Q 27The People Could Fly sorts its folktales into four groups: animal, fanciful, freedom, and which other kind?
Supernatural tales
Supernatural tales fill the third section with ghosts and devils, stories often told to scare children into behaving.
Q 28Which writer's Uncle Remus books first popularized many of the animal tales retold in The People Could Fly?
Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris, an Atlanta journalist, published his versions in heavy dialect. Hamilton avoided much of that thick dialect so her retellings would read easily.
Q 29In Caribbean versions of the flying Africans legend, eating what is said to keep people from flying?
Salt
Salt is the barrier in these tellings: anyone who has eaten it cannot fly away. The idea may be linked to Caribbean lore about the soucouyant.
Q 30Which West African people's 1803 rebellion in Georgia is often called the root of the flying Africans legend?
Igbo
Igbo captives rose up on the boat carrying them to St. Simons Island, then walked into Dunbar Creek rather than be enslaved. Storytellers later said they flew, or walked on water, home to Africa.