A MONITOR QUIZ, Heroines in Children's Literature

Throughout children's literature are exceptional girls and women who lived lives filled with adventure, family, and mystery. Can you name the title of the books from which these excerpts were taken? (Newbery and Caldecott winners are noted with an asterisk.)

1. "That night Sarah slept warm under the quilts. On a peg nearby hung her cloak - and she did not need it. She had kept up her courage and it was something that would always be with her. Always - even when the cloak was all worn out."

2. "When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen."

3. "Even in the days before my teacher came, I used to feel along the square stiff box-wood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell, would find the first violets and lilies."

4. "I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only, I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher.... Oh, I've dozens of plans, Marilla."

5. "Once upon a time, 60 years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.... A wagon track ran before the house, turning and twisting out of sight ... but the little girl did not know where it went, nor what might be at the end of it."

6. "We can't give up our girls for a dozen fortunes. Rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another."

7. " 'Oh, Grandfather,' [she] cried ... 'it was lovely up there, with all the flowers and then the fire and the rosy rocks. And see what I've brought you.' She shook out the contents of her little apron in front of him...."

8. "All that summer Miss ..., her pockets full of seeds, wandered over fields and headlands, sowing lupine. She scattered seeds along the highways and down the country lanes. She flung handfuls of them around the schoolhouse and back of the church. She tossed them into hollows and along stone walls."

9. "He thought about it all day, how before Leslie came, he had been a nothing.... It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture ... and turned him into a king.... Wasn't king the best you could be?" *

10. "It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I - nor for that matter anyone else - will be interested in ... a 13-year-old schoolgirl."

11. "Fern came slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. As she approached her chair, the carton wobbled, and there was a scratching noise. Fern looked at her father... There inside, looking up at her, was a newborn pig....

" 'He's yours,' said Mr. Arable."

12. "When Tommy and Anika reached the gate they heard her calling....

" 'I'm going to be a pirate when I grow up,' she said. 'Are you?'"

13. " 'Go ho-o-ome,' the wind yodeled....

"For a short second, [she] wondered if she shouldn't heed the wind's warning. But no! The gown had to get to the duchess!"

14. "[She] stepped down from the wagon, a cloth bag in her hand. She reached up and took off her yellow bonnet, smoothing back her brown hair into a bun. She was plain and tall." *

ANSWERS

(1) "The Courage of Sarah Noble," by Alice Dalgliesh, 1986; (2) "The Secret Garden," by Frances H. Burnett, 1938; (3) "The Story of My Life," by Helen Keller, 1954; (4) "Anne of Green Gables," by L. M. Montgomery, 1908; (5) "Little House in the Big Woods," by Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1932; (6) "Little Women," by Louisa May Alcott, 1868; (7) "Heidi," by Johanna Spyri, 1880; (8) "Miss Rumphius," by Barbara Cooney, 1982; (9) "Bridge to Terabithia," by Katherine Paterson, 1977 *; (10) "Diary of a Young Girl," by Anne Frank, 1952; (11) "Charlotte's Web," by E.B. White, 1952; (12) "Pippi Longstocking," by Astrid Lindgren, 1950; (13) "Brave Irene," by William Steig, 1986. (14) "Sarah, Plain and Tall," by Patricia MacLachlan, 1985 *