Test

Read the selection and choose the best answer to each question. Then fill
in the answer on your answer document.

“A Ribbon for Baldy” is set in the 1920s. The narrator and his classmates have
been assigned a long-term project by their science teacher Professor Herbert. The
narrator tries to think of a useful project that will also help support his family’s
farm. While riding his mule across the farm to school, he sees a hill called Little
Baldy, and he finally gets an idea.

from

A Ribbon for Baldy

by Jesse Stuart

1  One morning in February I left home in a white cloud that had settled over the deep valleys. I could not see an object ten feet in front of me in this mist. I crossed the pasture into the orchard and the mist began to thin. When I reached the ridge road, the light thin air was clear of mist. I looked over the sea of rolling white clouds. The tops of the dark winter hills jutted up like little islands.

2  I have to ride a mule, but not one of my classmates lives in a prettier place, I thought, as I surveyed my world. Look at Little Baldy! What a pretty island in the sea of clouds. A thin ribbon of cloud seemed to envelop cone- shaped Little Baldy from bottom to top like the new rope Pa had just boughtfor the windlass over our well.

3  Then, like a flash—the idea for my project came to me. And what an idea it was! I’d not tell anybody about it!

4  I was so happy I didn’t care who laughed at me, what anyone said or who watched me eat fat meat on corn bread for my lunch. I had an idea and I knew it was a wonderful one.

5  “I’ve got something to talk over with you,” I told Pa when I got home. 1  “Look over there at that broom-sedge and the scattered pines on Little Baldy. I’d like to burn the broom-sedge and briers and cut the pines and farm that this summer.”

6 We stood in our barnlot and looked at Little Baldy.

7 “Yes, I’ve been thinkin’ about clearin’ that hill up someday,” Pa said.

8 “Pa, I’ll clear up all this south side and you clear up the other side,” I said. “And I’ll plow all of it and we’ll get it in corn this year.” 1 Broom-sedge is a tall, tufted grass common in the United States.

9 “Now this will be some undertakin’,” he said. “I can’t clear that land up and work six days a week on the railroad section. But if you will clear up the south side, I’ll hire Bob Lavender to do the other side.”

10 “That’s a bargain,” I said.

11 That night while the wind was still and the broom-sedge and leaves were dry, my father and I set fire all the way around the base. Next morning Little Baldy was a dark hill jutting high into February’s cold, windy sky.

12 Pa hired Bob Lavender to clear one portion and I started working on the other. I worked early of mornings before I went to school. I hurried home and worked into the night.

13 By middle March, I had my side cleared. Bob Lavender had finished his too. We burned the brush and I was ready to start plowing.

14 By April 15th I had plowed all of Little Baldy.

15 If my father had known what I was up to, he might not have let me do it. But he was going early to work on the railway section and he never got home until nearly dark. So when I laid Little Baldy off to plant him in corn, I started at the bottom and went around and around this high cone-shaped hill like a corkscrew. I was three days reaching the top. Then, with a hand planter, I planted the corn on moonlit nights.

16 When I showed my father what I’d done, he looked strangely at me. Then he said, “What made you do a thing like this? What’s behind all of this?”

17 “I’m going to have the longest corn row in the world,” I said. “How long do you think it is, Pa?”

18 “That row is over 20 miles,” Pa said, laughing.

19 Finn and I measured the corn row with a rod pole and it was 23.5 miles long.

20 When it came time to report on our projects and I stood up in class and said I had a row of corn on our hill farm 23.5 miles long, everybody laughed. But when I told how I got the idea and how I had worked to accomplish my project, everybody was silent.

21 Professor Herbert and the General Science class hiked to my home on a Saturday in early May when the young corn was pretty and green in the long row. Two newspapermen from a neighboring town came too, and a photographer took pictures of Little Baldy and his ribbon of corn. He took pictures of me, of my home and parents and also of Professor Herbert and my classmates.

22 When the article and pictures were published, a few of my classmates got a little jealous of me but not one of them ever laughed at me again. And my father and mother were the proudest two parents any son could ever hope to have.

Excerpted from “A Ribbon for Baldy” in A JESSE STUART READER. Copyright 1963 McGraw Hill Company.
Copyright Renewed Jesse Stuart Foundation. Used by permission of Marian Reiner on behalf of the
Foundation.

By using the first-person point of view, the author is able to show —

Read the following dictionary entry.

Which definition most closely matches the meaning of surveyed as it is used in paragraph 2?

In paragraphs 7 through 10, why is the father’s response to the narrator’s plan important to
the excerpt?

Read this sentence from paragraph 2.

A thin ribbon of cloud seemed to envelop cone-shaped Little Baldy
from bottom to top like the new rope Pa had just bought for the
windlass over our well.

The author uses imagery in this sentence most likely to show how —

Paragraphs 11 through 15 support the primary theme of the excerpt by emphasizing the
narrator’s —

CRAB is to CRUSTACEAN as SCALLOP is to

BRONTE is to AUTHOR as SPIELBERG is to

SLY is to FOX as FRESH is to

SONG is to VERSE as POETRY is to

SURF is to WAVES as BOXING is to

Graham has twice as many books as Bob. Chan has six more books than Bob. if
Bobs has x books, which of the following represents the total number of books the
three boys have ?

The graph shows the number of pens, pencils, rulers and erasers sold by a store in one week. 

The name of the items are missing from the graph. Pens were the items most often sold, and fewer erasers than any other item were sold. More pencils than rulers were sold. How many pencils were sold ?

What fraction of an hour has passed between 1:10 am and 1:30 am ?

When a new highway is built, the average time it takes a bus to travel from one town
to another is reduced from 25 minutes to 20 minutes. What is the percent decrease in
time taken to travel between the two towns ?