Q 01/05

In Out of the Dust, what does the pail left beside the stove hold when Ma mistakes it for water?

A) Gasoline

B) Kerosene

C) Turpentine

D) Cooking oil

Answer · why

B) Kerosene

Kerosene, the lamp fuel, bursts into flame when Ma pours it to make coffee. Billie Jo flings the burning pail out of the door just as her mother runs ...

Q 02/05

In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo names her newborn baby brother after which American president?

A) Herbert Hoover

B) Theodore Roosevelt

C) Woodrow Wilson

D) Franklin Roosevelt

Answer · why

D) Franklin Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt was the president whose New Deal offered farmers like her father a crop loan. Billie Jo gives the name at the burial, when the reve...

Q 03/05

In Out of the Dust, Ma weeps over news of Canada's Dionne sisters, a famous 1934 set of what?

A) Triplets

B) Quadruplets

C) Quintuplets

D) Sextuplets

Answer · why

C) Quintuplets

Quintuplets were sensational news in 1934: five babies born at once to one mother in Canada. Ma, carrying a single child through a hungry summer, shed...

Q 04/05

In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo's father jokes that the dusty milk at dinner has turned into what?

A) Coffee

B) Buttermilk

C) Molasses

D) Chocolate

Answer · why

D) Chocolate

Chocolate is his joke for the brown milk, just as the grit on the potatoes is pepper. Plates and glasses wait upside down on the table until the momen...

Q 05/05

Which instrument, a wedding gift from her father to Ma, is Billie Jo's great talent in Out of the Dust?

A) Fiddle

B) Guitar

C) Piano

D) Banjo

Answer · why

C) Piano

Piano lessons from Ma began on Billie Jo's fifth birthday. By thirteen she is earning dimes playing with a local band in towns across the Panhandle.