Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class reviews, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-3

Reading Check

1. What happened to Caleb and Anna’s mother?

2. What news does Papa announce after dinner?

3. Who is Maggie?

4. What is the name of Sarah’s brother?

5. How does Sarah describe her home in Maine?

6. What gifts for the children does Sarah bring with her to the prairie?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Explain Anna’s complicated love for Caleb. How has she dealt with her grief over losing her mother?

2. What kind of father is Jacob Whiting? What are his motivations for placing the ad in the newspaper?

3. Describe Sara Wheaton’s personality. What do her letters reveal about her?

Paired Resource

“I Ask My Mother to Sing”

• This poem by Li-Young Lee describes a child’s experience listening to his mother and grandmother sing about their former home in China.
• How is the speaker’s desire to hear a parent sing similar or different to Caleb and Anna’s? What’s the relationship between singing and home (or homesickness) in the poem? Do the mother and grandmother sing to share their memories of China with the poem’s speaker, and have we seen Sarah do anything similar?