Q 01/05

In The People Could Fly, what did the people shed before they were packed onto slave ships?

A) Their wings

B) Their names

C) Their shadows

D) Their songs

Answer · why

A) 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 scatter...

Q 02/05

Which deep-voiced actor read twelve of the folktales for an audiobook of The People Could Fly?

A) Morgan Freeman

B) James Earl Jones

C) Laurence Fishburne

D) Ossie Davis

Answer · why

B) James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, recorded twelve of the tales for an audio edition published by Knopf.

Q 03/05

In the Tar Baby story, also retold in The People Could Fly, where does the rabbit beg not to be thrown?

A) The alligator pond

B) The hornets' nest

C) The briar patch

D) The cooking pot

Answer · why

C) 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 ...

Q 04/05

Which novelist built Song of Solomon on the flying Africans legend retold in The People Could Fly?

A) Alice Walker

B) Octavia E. Butler

C) Maya Angelou

D) Toni Morrison

Answer · why

D) 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 legen...

Q 05/05

Which abolitionist dreamed as a girl of flying like a bird, echoing the legend told in The People Could Fly?

A) Sojourner Truth

B) Harriet Jacobs

C) Ida B. Wells

D) Harriet Tubman

Answer · why

D) 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 meta...